Terrorist Attacks (Paris)

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman is correct about those who appear on the periphery of investigations. The Intelligence and Security Committee referred to that in its report on the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in Woolwich, and I have already had discussions about it with counter-terrorism police and the security services and continue to talk to them about it. We need to continue to look at a number of issues involving those who appear at the periphery of various groups, and at the links between potential terrorists and criminal activity of various sorts.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

May I add my voice to those supporting the updating of our communications data capability merely to keep pace with changes in technology, so that we maintain the capabilities that we have? May I also invite the Home Secretary to use this latest incident as a case study to establish what the journey is that a good Islamic person may take that finishes with them being a terrorist—what is the psychological journey, what are the stimulants that create that terrorist, and how do we get inside that process to prevent it from happening?

[Mrs May]

It is of course important that in our work to prevent people from moving down the road to terrorist activity and from being radicalised we look at the factors in play when somebody becomes a terrorist or is radicalised. Those issues are already examined, and every opportunity is taken to learn lessons and identify what the journey is for individuals, so that we can better ensure that we are able to prevent radicalisation and prevent people from moving into terrorism. However, that will be complex, and many factors will be involved, which will vary from individual to individual.

Police Recorded Crime Statistics

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to debate the report of the Select Committee on Public Administration, “Caught red-handed: Why we can’t count on Police Recorded Crime statistics”.

The Public Administration Committee’s remit includes oversight of the work of the UK Statistics Authority and the Government Statistical Service. We attach the highest importance to that responsibility. We took a decisive role in decisions leading to the appointment of the present chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Andrew Dilnot. The Committee announced a programme of work for this Parliament that involves a series of studies to examine statistics and their use in Government, their accuracy and relevance, and their availability, accessibility and intelligibility to the public. A full description of that series is set out on our website, along with the reports that we have published so far.

We must ensure that the UK Statistics Authority is doing all that it can to deliver the very best statistics for Government, the public and public services. That helps deliver better policy, improved scrutiny and media reporting and ultimately better democracy. Measurement is a key way of holding Government to account. We can be proud of UK statistics, which are renowned throughout the world and trusted. I pay tribute to the Government Statistical Service and to all statisticians in Government and the public services, on whose professionalism and impartiality we all depend. The Committee’s programme of work aims to ensure that all statisticians and others who work with data and evidence across the public sector have the tools to do so effectively. We made it clear that we remain prepared when necessary to take up issues that might arise concerning statistics and their use in Government.

The process leading to the inquiry on crime statistics started when a Metropolitan police constable—James Patrick, a constituent of mine who worked in the statistics section of the Metropolitan police—walked into my advice surgery. He told me that he had been trying to raise concerns that the crime figures recorded by the Metropolitan police were being manipulated. For example, despite all the attention given to improving the police response to women reporting rape and to other sexual offences, they were still being under-recorded, according to him, by between 22% and 25%. Moreover, his persistent efforts to raise his concerns with his command chain had been met with indifference and then resistance. When he started to blog and write publicly about his concerns, it turned to outright hostility as the command chain resorted to disciplinary measures in an attempt to silence him.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

Although I am now a proud member of the Public Administration Committee, I was not a member when the report was done. Does my hon. Friend agree that PC James Patrick’s actions were both courageous and in the public interest, and that he has done a great service to this country in ensuring that this matter is highlighted, as the Committee has done?

[Mr Jenkin]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is worth emphasising that under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, PC Patrick should have been afforded some protection. I will come to the position of whistleblowers later in my remarks.

Our report, which was published this April, draws on evidence that we took under full parliamentary privilege from James Patrick. However, that was by no means the only evidence on which our conclusions relied. Our witnesses included Paul Ford, secretary of the Police Federation National Detective Forum; Dr Rodger Patrick—no relation—a former chief inspector at West Midlands police; and Peter Barron, a former detective chief superintendent at the Metropolitan police. They all fully corroborated Mr Patrick’s analysis. We heard about the various techniques that have crept into the culture of policing to help police meet crime reduction targets, leading to the corruption of police recorded crime statistics, so that they are less meaningful than they should be.

Those techniques include cuffing, in which multiple incidents are recorded as a single crime, and crimes such as burglary being recorded as less serious offences, such as theft or criminal damage. James Patrick also told us about nodding—offenders admitting to a number of offences in exchange for being charged with a less serious crime and getting a lighter sentence. There is also skewing, which is when more resources are put into the specific areas measured by performance indicators at the expense of other work.

All those techniques are designed to make constabularies look as though they are doing a better job than they actually are, as became evident after a sharper fall in crime was recorded by the police than in the crime survey for England and Wales. It was a statistical indicator that had already raised eyebrows in the UK Statistics Authority. Such things are done to improve individual officers’ job performance appraisals, promotion prospects and, ultimately, salaries.

We also heard about the terrible effect of such practices on the effectiveness of the police. It fails the victims of crime, because the crimes that they have attempted to report are not attended to. It results in the misallocation of police resources, because under-recorded crimes become neglected. Indeed, Mr Patrick believes that it contributed to the Metropolitan police’s failure to contain the London riots three years ago, because the new shift systems established by the Metropolitan police were based on a false understanding of crime patterns across London drawn from police recorded crime statistics. This adds up to a lack of trust, and raises questions about police leadership that must seriously affect police effectiveness.

We also took evidence from police and crime commissioners, such as our own from Essex, Nick Alston, who warned, in my view wisely, that however much police may think they have taken action to address the problems, ingrained attitudes and behaviour can have a long tail and take a long time to change. We also heard from academics Professor Stephen Shute and Professor Mike Hough of the Crime Statistics Advisory Committee, who told us:

“Lack of leadership results in decay in the recording systems.”

They said that there was

“no doubt that there has been dishonest manipulation at one end, through wilful blindness, to misunderstanding and ignorance, to the inappropriate exercise of discretion within a complicated set of rules.”

The Committee found that police recorded crime statistics were unreliable and inaccurate. Lax supervision of recorded crime data meant that police were failing in their core role of protecting the public and preventing crime. This is not just about inaccurate numbers; it is about the long crisis of values and ethics at the heart of our national police force. The poor data integrity that we found reflects the poor quality of leadership within the police. Whether the police comply with the core values of policing, including accountability, honesty and integrity, will determine whether the proper quality of police recorded crime data can be restored. I emphasise that there is much evidence that action is now being taken on that.

We found strong evidence that the police have under-recorded crime, particularly sexual crime such as rape, in many police areas. There remain wide disparities in no-crime rates—that is, where police decide that a crime did not take place—following reports of rape, for example. In January 2014, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, on behalf of the Rape Monitoring Group, released a compendium of statistics on recorded rapes in each force over the previous five years. I invite right hon. and hon. Friends and colleagues to look at the table showing how wide the variation is among different forces across England and Wales in their no-criming of rape. According to the figures, in Lincolnshire, for example, 26% of all reported rapes were no crimed in 2012-13; by contrast, in Merseyside, only 4% were. The national average was 11.9%.

The main reason for misrecording was the continued prevalence of numerical targets, which create perverse incentives to misrecord crime. A police officer is presented with a conflict. Does he or she record attempted burglary, or downgrade it to criminal damage in order to achieve the target? That creates conflict between the achievement of targets and core policing values. We deprecate the use of targets in the strongest possible terms, because most police forces are still in denial about the damage targets cause, both to data integrity and to standards of behaviour. We found an amazing disparity of attitude towards targets across police and crime commissioners and among chief constables. Our official police witnesses, most notably the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, were somewhat defensive and seemed unready to acknowledge that their statistics were inherently flawed. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe told us that the accuracy of data on rape and sexual offences was

“a lot better than it was, if we took it back five to 10 years.”

However, he did not think that it was entirely reliable and agreed that there was cause for concern.

The UK Statistics Authority has overall responsibility for the assessment of the quality of Government statistics. It designates a reliable series of statistics as national statistics only if they are good enough. As a result of the Public Administration Committee’s inquiry, shortly before the chair of the UK Statistics Authority appeared before us to give evidence on police recorded crime, it stripped police recorded crime data of the quality kitemark of national statistics. What our inquiry had already exposed demonstrated that the numbers produced by polices forces were simply not good enough to rely on. The Home Office, the Office for National Statistics and the UK Statistics Authority had all been far too passive in addressing the problem, even though they had all known about it for years.

[Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Chairman of the Public Administration Committee on his tremendous work in taking the matter forward and on securing today’s debate. How serious is the decision to remove the kitemark of national statistics from the police recorded crime statistics?

[Mr Jenkin]

It simply means that the raw data, on the basis of which so many decisions about the allocation of police manpower and resources are made, are of questionable accuracy. That cannot be a good thing. It also means that we found that there is a culture and attitude and ingrained behaviours that are in conflict with how we expect our police to behave and how the vast majority do aspire to behave. That is what we must address. A leadership model based on targets is a major cause of the problem and is flawed. I have been told anecdotally that there is a generation of “target junkies” in our police forces who have been brought up on and believe in targets and will find it difficult to move away from them. However, that is the cultural and attitudinal change that police leaders must bring about.

[Mrs Gillan]

When looking at the Government response to the report, I was delighted to see that the Home Secretary had taken positive steps in making it clear publicly that she has actively discouraged commissioners from setting performance targets, which is a good step. Does my hon. Friend have any more information on that? Failing that, hopefully the Minister can provide some information on how successful the Home Secretary’s public pronouncements have been, without interfering with the police and crime commissioners’ independence, in bringing influence to bear on the subject of targets being quite the wrong way to proceed.

[Mr Jenkin]

Our inquiry found that, for example, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, through the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, has continued to set targets. It is tempting in our political culture to set high-level and public targets, but I wonder whether the public believe the numbers anyway. It is the first law of science: as soon as one tries to measure something it changes its properties. That is what is happening in this case. Poor data integrity reflects the poor quality of leadership within the police, which the Home Secretary and the Minister here today have understood. That is why the Government have abolished national policing targets. It is for police forces and police and crime commissioners, including the Mayor of London in his equivalent role, to embrace and understand that and to believe it. That is a cultural change to which I hope this report is contributing. Otherwise, we are encouraging what amounts to institutional dishonesty about police recorded crime. What does that say about the police’s ability to comply with the core values of policing, including accountability, honesty and integrity? That is why PC James Patrick felt that it was his duty to speak out against what he found to be going on in his force.

Our report of course came on top of all the other controversies that have raised questions about the values and ethics of the police and their leadership. I will not list them all again now, but the whole question of leadership and values needs to be addressed. I yield to no one in my admiration and respect for so many police officers, chief constables and, indeed, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who has had a distinguished career in public service and whose senior officers and force daily put themselves at risk in the line of duty. Yet those same officers have overseen a deeply cynical culture about the quality of leadership, honesty and integrity by presiding over such a thing. That is why we recommended that the Committee on Standards in Public Life conduct a wide-ranging inquiry into the police’s compliance with the new code of ethics, in particular the role of leadership in promoting and sustaining those values.

I note that the CSPL will now investigate the public accountability structures of the police. I have to say that that is not quite the inquiry which Parliament, through my Committee’s report, has asked it to conduct. We recommended that the CSPL should conduct

“a wide-ranging inquiry into the police’s compliance with the new Code of Ethics; in particular the role of leadership in promoting and sustaining these values in the face of all the other pressures on the force.”

Accountability structures will not of themselves promote the right values in police leadership and in policing. Accountability depends upon effective leadership, which in turn depends upon leadership that is trusting and is trusted by its subordinates, and that in turn depends upon high levels of trust and integrity within the organisation. If the CSPL is to conduct its inquiry effectively, it cannot avoid the issue of ethics and integrity. I am somewhat mystified about why it is not prepared to confront that question directly and openly, even if Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary is already looking at it. After all, CSPL stands for Committee for Standards in Public Life and its remit is ethics and standards. If it avoids the issue of ethics and standards in the police, it will achieve nothing except to mess with a highly charged political debate about whether police and crime commissioners should continue to exist, which does not seem to be so relevant to the remit of the CSPL. Our recommendation reflects our understanding of the need to challenge police operational leadership about how they promote and sustain the values set out in the new ethics code. I am encouraged by the engagement of the new College of Policing and of many chief police officers around the country, but the CSPL’s unique and independent perspective has more to offer.

Turning to whistleblowing, one of the most depressing and saddening parts of our inquiry was discovering how the Metropolitan police treated James Patrick, my constituent. I was not able to address that as fully as I will now, because an employment tribunal was pending. He withdrew from the process. He could not take any more; it had taken too heavy a toll on him and his family and he was forced to resign from the Metropolitan police. Acting as a whistleblower, PC Patrick tried to highlight serious concerns about police-recorded crime and the target culture. We are indebted to him for his courage in speaking out, in fulfilment of his duty to the highest standards of public service, despite intense pressures to the contrary. Paul Ford of the Police Federation told us that his organisation

“was dealing with a lot of stifled whistleblowers…We have lots of anecdotal information but, unfortunately, people are fearful of coming forward and raising concerns. That comes down to the whistleblowing aspect of the lack of protection for people, the peer pressure and the fear factor in terms of their future”.

I am pleased the Minister for Crime Prevention has told me that the Home Office is looking at a range of radical proposals to strengthen protection for whistleblowers in the police, but that has all come too late for my constituent. Nevertheless, I look forward to what the Minister will add in today’s debate.

Our inquiry, the evidence presented to the Select Committee and the reaction of the UK Statistics Authority, which withdrew its approval of the police recorded crime stats, vindicate Mr Patrick and his actions utterly and completely. As I quoted earlier, even the Metropolitan Police Commissioner agrees that

“there is clearly something that PC Patrick raises that we need to get to the bottom of.”

Despite that, I can only describe the treatment of my constituent James Patrick as shameful. By doing his duty and raising the issues, he showed the highest commitment to the core policing values, but as a result he became the victim of the most monstrous injustice. He was in effect hounded out of his job, following a long period of harassment by the Metropolitan police command chain, which, I dare say, used and abused the disciplinary process to get rid of him. It does the police no credit that a whistleblower should be treated in such a way. He was, for example, accused of a conflict of interest for publishing a book about the misuse of police recorded crime statistics, even though the proceeds were paid to a police charity. In an LBC radio programme in December last year, Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said that he would meet PC Patrick. He never did so.

Most shameful of all, the Police Federation saw fit to finance a libel action at the choice of a serving police officer against a former Cabinet Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds, but I could not persuade it to fund the legal expenses and representation of PC Patrick in the employment tribunal that he was due to appear before as part of his defence. I find that completely and utterly inexplicable, particularly after the Police Federation itself told us in evidence to our Committee how difficult things are for police whistleblowers in this country.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I agree with everything the hon. Gentleman has said so far in his excellent speech. Given what he has told us about the Police Federation, do we not need a proper trade union for police officers, which would defend individuals as he suggests, instead of having an organisation that is in effect half controlled by the Home Office, rather than by its members, whom it is supposed to serve?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jenkin]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman, who is also a member of the Select Committee and took part in our inquiry, says. After what the Home Secretary said about the Police Federation, however, I do not think that it can be regarded as part of the Home Office. I am afraid that the Police Federation is more a branch of some of the worst aspects of police culture. It needs a dose of ethics and integrity as much as some parts of the police do. I will not make a speech about the federation now, but the incident we are discussing is yet another one that utterly vindicates what the Home Secretary told the Police Federation about six months ago in her courageous and outspoken speech.

The Government, in their response to our report, state that they aim to secure redesignation of police-recorded crime as a national statistic by the spring of next year. The Home Office is working on that with the Office for National Statistics, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and others. That was confirmed by the chairman of the UKSA in his response to our report last month.

HMIC is in the process of an all-force inspection on forces’ approach to crime recording and no-criming. Sexual offences is one of the six main crime types that the inspectorate is reviewing, and a specific sample of rape cases is being collected to assess police recording of rape. That is the only way in which to check the quality of police-recorded crime figures—to follow individual cases through, interviewing the person who originally reported the crime to see if the record is corroborated by what people thought that they had reported. It is called audit, and there needs to be more of it. Evidence shows that forces that carry out internal audits produce figures of much higher quality.

HMIC is conducting a 43-force inspection of police crime-recording policies and practices. An interim report was released in May 2014, with a final report to be published in the autumn. In addition, we are told that in 2014-15 HMIC will begin a new annual programme of all-force inspections of core policing work, to include crime recording. The work on that programme is in the planning stages. There is a commitment that HMIC will make specific recommendations for each of the 43 police forces in England and Wales to improve the accuracy and consistency of their recorded crime data. I very much welcome that.

In the HMIC inspection of the Essex police, my local constabulary, for example, the inspectorate found that crime is largely recorded accurately and ethically. Of the incidents in Essex examined by HMIC, fewer than 7% were incorrectly recorded as “no crimes”, which is still 7% too many, but compares well with a national average of 20% across the constabularies in England and Wales that were inspected for the interim report.

The HMIC interim report provides independent validation of the robust processes that exist in the Essex police to ensure that crimes are correctly recorded. Chief Constable Stephen Kavanagh has shown clear and strong leadership on the importance of accurate crime recording, developing and building on the work of his predecessor, Jim Barker-McCardle. The progress that has been made in moving away from a slavish reliance on strict performance targets and a lazy culture of chasing the figures is an important part of that. The Essex constabulary is setting an example that other forces should follow.

[Lindsay Roy]

Does the hon. Gentleman believe, as I do, that things have to go beyond audit to a more qualitative assessment of progress? There should not simply be a tick-box mentality.

[Mr Jenkin]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman, but the importance of audit is that it provides the data with which to challenge what is going on. Otherwise, the only option is to accept the figures given.

Scrutiny from the police and crime commissioner in Essex has been instrumental in encouraging the positive progress in the county. Nick Alston has supported Chief Constable Kavanagh and the independent inspection by HMIC, which means that the people of Essex can have a high level of confidence in the figures for police-recorded crime in Essex. The process, however, is ongoing. We must embed a culture in all our police forces based not on chasing figures but on the core tasks of policing: protecting people from harm, bringing criminals to justice and keeping our communities safe.

The Government have accepted some of our recommendations, but they have rejected our recommendation that the Home Office

“takes active primary operational responsibility and accepts accountability for ensuring the integrity of the data which it collates, validates and submits to the ONS for publication.”

The Government argue:

“It is for chief constables to ensure the quality of crime recording in their force area, and for PCCs to hold them to account.”

The Government also reject our recommendation that the UKSA should hold the Home Office to account, and instead argue that

“it is the responsibility of chief constables to ensure the quality of crime recording in their force, and for PCCs to hold chief constables to account.”

Nor are the Government taking up our recommendation that HMIC should set a minimum suitable rank for force crime registrars—something that we believe is necessary to ensure that they have sufficient authority within their force and direct access to their chief constables.

One reason why all the problems with crime statistics have developed is that no one appears ready to accept responsibility for the quality of police recorded crime statistics. Although the Government accept and welcome our report and its conclusions, they do not yet seem to be willing to address the fundamental questions of leadership nor to accept responsibility and be accountable.

I accept that the Government are addressing the leadership question through the College of Policing, but in the end it is Ministers who must take ultimate responsibility. In reality, the very fact that the Minister is sitting here shows that he is doing so; I only wish the Government would admit it. I am pleased that the Government’s response to our report has recommended that various agencies take action, but that will never absolve Ministers if we find further problems. Our system works by making Ministers accountable, and if there is not a measurable improvement, the PASC will hold Ministers to account.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Brown]

The hon. Gentleman’s question is about minors. If a minor complains of an offence of that kind, or somebody does so on their behalf, the facts should be recorded and investigated. Children are not playthings for adults to do with as they want. Our whole society should protect children, not leave them exposed to the sort of criminality that has been going on. That is why both the recording and the investigation of that sort of offence are of fundamental importance.

[Mr Jenkin]

To make a plea of mitigation in defence of the police, there are occasions when an offence is reported—perhaps even one as serious as rape—that involves two minors and it might actually be the right decision not to involve the criminal law. There must be an element of discretion, as it might be in the interests of neither party to involve the law in a particular case. The point that we are making is that that discretion has been used so widely in some constabularies that it cannot possibly be justified.

[Mr Brown]

I have made no argument against the use of discretion. My argument is against not treating such matters seriously in the first place—putting the statistical outcome before the value-led policing outcome. Minors, who are under the age of consent, are entitled to society’s protection. It may be that invoking the criminal law is not an appropriate response, but that should be decided after all the facts have been investigated and are known, and a decision has been made on the individual merits of the case. The decision about whether to investigate the case or to treat it as a crime should be driven not by the need to get a statistical outcome, but by the real outcome of protecting the youngster. That point comes through very strongly in the report. The hon. Gentleman raises a slightly tangential point. I do not think we are arguing against each other about the thrust of the report or what should be happening.

The report finds that the Home Office, the Office for National Statistics and the UK Statistics Authority have all been “far too passive”. We should not be incentivising the mis-recording of crime through a drive to meet numerical targets. The integrity of crime data is vital, as is the response of individual police commissioners, chief constables and their police forces.

At this point, I want to say something about my police force. The response of the Northumbria police force, which covers my constituency, has been exemplary. It is a good police force’s reply to just criticism. For Northumbria, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary made relatively minor criticisms of the no-crime recording for robberies. HMIC found slightly more serious discrepancies for the recording of violent offences and real cause for concern over the recording of reported rapes as “no-crime”—the issue that is absolutely at the core of the report.

The criticism is just, and the response clear and firm. Rather than wait for the report’s publication, Northumbria police, with the police and crime commissioner working closely with the chief constable, have gone back and reviewed every “no-crime” case involving rape since October 2011. That amounts to 153 cases in total and of the initial assessment, 54 cases were identified as requiring further investigation. That is about a third of cases, which tallies broadly with the results of HMIC’s sample. Each case has been reopened as a crime and will be reinvestigated by the review team, which will contact victims and work jointly with a local rape support group to ensure that proper support is in place for individuals. A new team of officers has been brought in to conduct this review and 48 officers involved in the previous investigation have been given formal notifications as part of the standard procedure in such cases.

The proactive good governance and strong challenge provided by Northumbria’s police and crime commissioner, working closely and well with the chief constable, have brought about that swift and responsive action. It was the objective of Northumbria police to ensure that the force takes crime seriously and that, when issues emerge, it responds promptly and properly. Nowhere is that more important than with brutal crimes of violence against the vulnerable and defenceless, who are almost always women.

The police are right to take this stand—I support them in what they are doing—but it comes at a cost. Police budgets are under formidable pressure, and for historic reasons, Northumbria police are more reliant on national funding for a proportion of their total income than any other force in the country. Further budgetary cuts will make it even harder to run the service in the way that we want.

In Northumbria police, we have an example of an able police and crime commissioner working closely with an able chief constable to achieve the results that the public want. All three police and crime commissioners in the north-east of England are making an effective contribution to the role, so much so that, at least in our region, we should give this new idea a chance to bed in. Contemplating abolishing the role and reverting to the previous arrangements is premature.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley. I welcome the decision to make time available for this debate, and I congratulate the Public Administration Committee and its Chair on doing a service to our country by tackling a series of problems—I shall refer to them in detail—in a thorough, impartial and forensic way, rightly challenging all those with power to act, be that the police service or those responsible at area level, including police and crime commissioners and the Government. This debate is well timed, because it comes against a background of a year during which there has been, to say the least, lively debate about police statistics. There is the work of not just the Public Administration Committee, but the UK Statistics Authority, the Office for National Statistics and Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary.

Why does accurate crime reporting matter? First, it is crucial that criminal activities in local force areas are identified properly if the police are to deploy their resources efficiently and effectively, according to real need. In the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown), it is about an evidence-based approach to how we commit local police resource. Secondly, accurate crime reporting is vital with regard to the victims of crime. Proper recording has an effect on getting victims to come forward and, crucially, informs the decisions that have to be taken to support the victims of crime, particularly sexual crime. Thirdly, accurate recording of crime helps politicians—at area and local level, in Parliament and at Government level—properly to hold the police to account.

Fourthly, proper recording of crime also informs other interventions. The Chair of the Select Committee referred to the excellent chief constable of Essex. I had the pleasure of meeting him recently, and I can give a rather interesting example from that. As in Northumbria, there was a welcome focus on the rising problem of domestic violence. The assessment made was that it was a very significant and growing problem in the county, so Northumbria police introduced a world-class system. They brought in a systems engineer with a background at Ford to construct the ability to track perpetrators and victims, and potential perpetrators and victims, of domestic violence, and also to identify domestic violence hot spots, so that other interventions could take place. For example, if there was a particular problem on some estates, that might require interventions in the schools on those estates. Having an accurate picture of crime is absolutely key on all those fronts.

[Mr Jenkin]

We were briefed yesterday by the chief constable of Essex, and many of my colleagues were astonished to learn that whereas most people think of crime as burglary, auto theft or violence against the person, there are four times as many incidents of domestic violence as burglaries every day in the county of Essex. The scale of the domestic violence problem is something that all constabularies will have to spend much more time on in order to protect the public, who are becoming victims of these crimes.

[Jack Dromey]

I totally agree with the Chair of the Select Committee. Historically, as my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) said, this crime was simply not taken seriously enough; it used to be described as “a domestic”. There has been welcome progress in the past 10 years and more—of that there is no doubt—but it remains a crime substantially hidden from history. Ensuring that we have an accurate picture, that we encourage victims to come forward, and that they are properly supported when they do is therefore of the highest importance.

Let me turn to the police recorded crime statistics. It was absolutely right to strip those statistics of their national statistics status—the gold standard—on the back of evidence heard by the Select Committee. Considering the substantial weight of evidence that has come forward of significant under-recording of crime, it would have been dangerous to let ourselves be drawn into the false sense of security that those statistics were providing. I therefore commend the considerable courage of PC James Patrick, who alerted the Chair of the Select Committee to his concerns and then appeared before the Committee so that its members could hear at first hand, from the sharp end, just what was happening. It heard very powerful evidence of—the Chair used these words earlier—cuffing, nodding and skewing. As the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) rightly acknowledged, PC Patrick was a brave man who exposed what was clearly wrong.

The ONS has raised a number of hypotheses, including some very similar to what PC Patrick said, as to why the police were recording crime incorrectly, including the idea that there were performance pressures associated with targets. The time has clearly come to move on from that old-style performance target regime.

In addition to what PC Patrick, the ONS and others have said, there was compelling evidence to the Select Committee from Dr Rodger Patrick, a former chief inspector of the West Midlands police service. He set out his research, which suggested that

“the perverse incentives embedded in quantitative performance management…encourage a range of ‘gaming’ behaviours that result in under-recording of crime.”

As the Chair of the Committee said, there have been other “incentives”, including the desire for promotion.

Let me turn to the crime survey for England and Wales. That was historically relied on as more accurate. However, we must recognise that the situation is far from ideal. It is true that the CSEW stats are based on interviews with adults about their experience of crime, regardless of whether or not it was reported to the police, but the CSEW stats cannot give us a detailed indication of crime trends at local level. We are missing that vital piece of the puzzle.

Additionally and very importantly, several crimes are not included in the statistics, and that ultimately skews our understanding of crime and where it is headed. For example, according to an ONS study released in July 2013, the number of fraud offences could total between 3.6 million and 3.8 million incidents of crime a year. However, most fraud offences in England and Wales are now referred to a central organisation, Action Fraud, rather than being logged by local forces. It is therefore believed that if bank and credit card fraud were included in the CSEW stats, the estimated number of annual offences would jump by almost 50%. When we listen to Government rhetoric on crime being at an all-time low, we must remember that the Government tend to pick and choose which crimes to pray in aid and which statistics to refer to, ignoring these very significant and growing areas of crime, which are not properly reflected in the statistics. That is both wrong and dangerous.

Professor Marian FitzGerald, a criminologist at the university of Kent, was absolutely right when she said to The Times in August 2014:

“Ministers were readily persuaded that the Crime Survey represented a gold standard for measuring crime when it started to show a continuous fall from the time Labour took office in 1997. Yet here we have an admission from its own results that crime is 50 per cent higher than the figure it claims.”

In addition, the CSEW does not cover a range of other things. It does not cover those living in group residences such as care homes, student halls of residence and prisons, or crimes against commercial or public sector bodies. The CSEW figures exclude murder and manslaughter because the victim is dead; figures on rape and other sex offences, which are calculated separately and differently because of their sensitive nature; and crimes, such as drug possession, that are considered victimless.

Both the Chair of the Select Committee and my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East referred to no-criming. Another important issue identified by the Select Committee in its report was the prevalence of no-criming. In response to the

“damning indictment of police complacency, inertia and lack of leadership”,

the Select Committee recommended that the Home Office undertake a comprehensive analysis to explain the extraordinary disparities in no-crime rates for sexual offences across all police forces.

The gravity of the impact of no-criming should not be underestimated. Let us consider this example given by HMIC of a case that was no-crimed. A woman alleged rape by a man in a car after she changed her mind about having sex following a discussion about use of a condom. The rape was recorded as a crime. She reports that she did not run away because she was scared of being beaten up. There had been no violence or pinning down, although the woman said that her chest was sore and she had felt intimidated. The incident was no-crimed because the man said that he did not know that she did not consent to having sex, but there is no additional verifiable information to show that the victim had in fact given consent. That was “no crime”.

Let us imagine, first, the difficulty of coming forward to report a rape during which the woman was so afraid for her well-being that she felt powerless to do anything. Let us imagine then what happens if the authorities doubt her, in effect favouring the perpetrator, despite no evidence being given to disprove her allegations.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East rightly praised the excellent work of Vera Baird in Northumbria. When the issue that he referred to was looked into as a consequence of her action, more than one in three rape allegation cases initially deemed to be no crime were reopened, following a review of 153 separate cases. An audit by HMIC identified that the force may have incorrectly no-crimed many of those cases. As a result of the action taken by Vera Baird, the chief constable ordered a review of all such reports going back three years, and a team of experienced officers have now checked 153 cases. In addition, 48 officers involved in the incorrect no-criming and failure to act have been warned that they may face disciplinary action as a result of the inquiry by the force.

Concern about this issue is all the greater today; statistics show a 29% increase in rape, and a worrying justice gap: in the last year on record, there was a fall of 28% in referrals for prosecution, and a fall of 14% in prosecutions.

On unreported crime, in its interim report released earlier this year, HMIC noted a “significant under-recording of crime”. Basing its comments on the assessment of 13 police forces, HMIC stated that up to 20% of crimes may be unrecorded. Only yesterday, I had the privilege of attending an event organised by the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, at which I heard some heartbreaking cases of violence against shop workers, including the case of a man whose whole life was ruined as a consequence of being seriously assaulted at work. A survey by USDAW of its members revealed that one in five of those who had been assaulted did not report the incident, not least because they often lacked confidence that any action would be taken if they did.

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[Jack Dromey]

Again, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. I want to make a general comment about the under-reporting of crime. The Conservative police and crime commissioner for Suffolk, Tim Passmore, has said that he would not be complacent about a drop in crime in Suffolk because in his assessment, half of all offences go unreported.

As we know from tragic experience over the past two to three years, the scale and obscenity of some crimes—including domestic violence, sexual offences and child abuse—have been hidden from history. I welcome the growing focus on those obscene crimes that are the legacy of history and that sadly persist to this day. When it comes to tackling child sexual exploitation—I say this with all respect to the Minister—I have no doubt whatever that the Government are taking the matter seriously, but it is the worst possible time to cut 16,000 police officers; demand is rapidly growing. In the West Midlands police, 10% of officers are working on nothing but historical and current CSE cases. In the words of the chief constable, that is the tip of the iceberg. The debate today reinforces the need to take action on sexual crime and crime against children. To do that, the police need determination and focus, but they also need the resources that will enable them to do their job.

[Mr Jenkin]

We all share the hon. Gentleman’s concern about the pressure on resources. However, the chief of the Metropolitan police has reported that he has been able to take all the savings out of the back room, and there are just as many officers on the front line as there were before the spending reductions. In Essex, we are finding that technology can enable police officers to do much more. Technology can release resources for the extra tasks that we are demanding of the police, despite the overall reduction in resources. Furthermore, there are still huge savings to be made in the way in which police forces buy technology and communications equipment. I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but I do not think that we need to despair about it.

[Jack Dromey]

The Chair of the Select Committee makes an interesting point. It is true that the police have coped remarkably so far, in the circumstances. There has been some interesting innovation in the use of technology; I mentioned a classic example in the Essex police service. In addition, there remains significant scope to develop the use of technology. For example, the 19 basic technological requirements provide remote access and allow police officers to operate in the field with all necessary support, intelligence and access to intelligence, so that they do not have to go back to police stations. The electronic submission of witness statements is speeding up the criminal justice process, as the Camberwell project has shown. Video-link evidence can allow cases to be brought quickly and effectively to court, particularly domestic violence cases; some interesting experiences have arisen out of the Camberwell project in that regard.

Having said all that, I want to provide one example from the West Midlands police service to illustrate why resources matter. In the west midlands, 40 people have been brought before the courts for serious terrorist crime in the past five years, and there have been 31 convictions. That conviction rate was the result of highly effective and patient building of relationships with communities—all bar one of the defendants were of a Muslim background—and good neighbourhood policing. Year in, year out, the police have patiently built trust and confidence with the community, to the point where the community now comes forward and identifies wrongdoing in its ranks.

With all respect to the Chair of the Select Committee, all over the country neighbourhood policing is being hollowed out; that is eroding the ability of the police to form relationships that are crucial not only to the detection of wrongdoing—in the cases that I have just mentioned, serious wrongdoing—but the prevention of crimes and the diversion of people from crime. I have been conducting a tour of police services all over the country, including Essex. Everywhere I go, I hear that we are getting close to what the President of the Association of Chief Police Officers has called the “tipping point”. The Government must reflect long and hard on the continuing trajectory of significant cuts to our police service.

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[The Minister for Crime Prevention (Norman Baker)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) on introducing this debate and on his Committee’s useful report. I have no doubt that the Committee will continue to hold Ministers to account on such matters, as it should. This is an important debate because it is about not just an arbitrary matter of crime statistics, but how victims are treated within our system. The debate has hugely affected the public’s perception of the police’s integrity, transparency and accountability. I have listened with great interest to what has been said in this helpful and intelligent debate, and I will do my best to respond to the points that have been made.

By way of context, today’s figures confirm that crime is down by more than 20% under the coalition Government, according to the independent crime survey for England and Wales. I will come back to that survey in the light of the comments made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). At the outset, I want to say that we have confidence in the survey, which has been running since 1981, and the trends are very clear.

In January 2013, the ONS published a report highlighting divergence between trends in the crime survey and police recorded crime going back to 2002-03, but the report stated that there is no simple explanation. The same report also stated that the analysis does not suggest that the general pattern of recorded crime falling since 2002-03 should be questioned, which I am pleased is also the conclusion of the Select Committee’s report. Since the ONS report, more victims have come forward to report previously under-reported crimes such as fraud and sexual offences, and ONS analysis shows that the police are improving how they record crime, and we should all welcome that improvement.

[Mr James Gray in the Chair]

The coalition Government has always believed that the crime statistics—both the crime survey for England and Wales and the police recorded crime figures—must be as robust and independent as possible, and I am confident that the Government is taking the necessary steps to improve the accuracy of police recorded crime. I make it plain that no Government has an interest in inaccurate statistics, not least for the reasons set out by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington. We have no interest in reducing crime figures; we have an interest in reducing crime, which is our motivation every day. As he says, accurate recording matters.

It is particularly important that the police record crime accurately, so that victims receive the services they deserve and so that the public can hold their force to account, including through their elected police and crime commissioner. Last year, before the Select Committee’s inquiry began, the Home Secretary commissioned HMIC to undertake a detailed inspection of crime recording in every police force. The inspectorate’s interim report, published in May, unfortunately indicated significant failings in the first 13 police forces to be inspected. So far, HMIC has published detailed reports for 21 police forces, with detailed recommendations on the need to improve.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way, but I must insist on accuracy on one point. There may be a bit of wishful thinking in his Department. HMIC was not specifically tasked with that responsibility until after our inquiry started. There has been some retrospective interpretation of what HMIC was asked to do, as HMIC was tasked to do that only after our report got going. I understand why everyone is a bit defensive about what our inquiry started to uncover, and the Government want to be seen to be ahead of the game, but I honestly believe that he is inadvertently misleading the House by suggesting that all that had started before our inquiry began.

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[Norman Baker]

As my right hon. Friend will know, Ministers of course regularly meet not only chief constables but PCCs. I do so; the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims does so; and of course the Home Secretary does so. PCCs are in no doubt that the Home Office’s view is that targets are inappropriate, and no doubt they will be listening to this debate; I would be very surprised if they did not, as it is a major debate on policing. Nevertheless, I will obviously take the opportunity, as other Ministers will, to reinforce that view. However, as my right hon. Friend recognises, PCCs are independently elected, and they are responsible to their electors for their decisions.

[Mr Jenkin]

My right hon. Friend the Minister is making a good fist of responding to the debate, but are there not better targets that PCCs should pursue? For example, by surveying the public whom they serve, they could ask them how safe they feel from crime and how much confidence they have in their local police forces. Are those not better targets? Indeed, they tackle the question of perception, which is so often what crime is really about—people feeling fear of crime and often irrationally so, because they live in a very safe place.

[Norman Baker]

It is certainly right for PCCs to—how can I put it?—set the background music for their area. For example, in my area, the PCC has made it very plain that she thinks that tackling domestic violence and domestic abuse is an important issue, and I think that she is both within her rights to do so and, indeed, right to have made that a priority. However, giving a clear steer that she expects the police in Sussex to make tackling domestic violence a priority is quite different from saying, “You must have a certain number of convictions or prosecutions.” That approach would lead to perverse behaviour. Giving a steer without setting a target is probably what I would expect PCCs to do, and my local PCC does that in Sussex on that issue.

The difficulty with targets is that, if we put down the track, that is the way the train goes—if I can revert to a previous ministerial role in saying that—and the train does not always end up at the terminus where we would want it to end up. So we have given chief constables genuine operational independence by scrapping national targets. Of course, chief constables have a responsibility to ensure that crime recording in their force is accurate, whether or not their PCC has set local targets. Accuracy is vital, both to ensure that data are robust and—more importantly—to ensure that victims of crime are getting the service they deserve.

Although HMIC’s interim report did not find written evidence of performance pressures leading to failures in crime recording, it did not rule that out. The final report will include the results of a survey of police officers and it may reveal that officers sometimes feel under performance pressure to misreport crimes. Obviously, if that is what HMIC concludes, we will pay close attention; clearly, it cannot be right if such behaviour does exist. The only pressure that officers should feel is to perform for the public and to do their jobs well and with integrity.

Of course, there may also be some genuine human errors and cases where the police are legitimately exercising their discretion, but we have been clear that any officers who deliberately mis-record a crime are crossing a thick red line. Any officer suspected of falsifying crime figures should be investigated and, if it turns out to be the appropriate way forward, prosecuted.

Strong safeguards are in place to ensure that police recording of crime is accurate. Clear rules govern crime recording, and each force has a crime registrar who will arbitrate on crime recording decisions. The code of ethics is now established as a code of practice, and it has been distributed to all officers and to staff of all ranks. It sets out a clear declaration of the principles and standards of behaviour that are expected. It actively promotes ethical reasoning, which encourages officers and staff to question and challenge both themselves and others, and to make ethical decisions in the policing context. Changes have been made to Home Office guidance to ensure that breaches of the code could amount to misconduct.

In drafting the code, the College of Policing was of the firm belief that the code would be counter-productive if it drew up a list defining what each officer and member of staff should and should not do. However, an exception was made in respect of compliance with the national crime recording standard, which was included as a specific example to reinforce the importance of integrity in the recording of crime. If an officer or member of police staff deliberately or negligently fails to comply with the national crime recording standard, the degree of failure will be considered and appropriate misconduct action will be taken.

Members—not least the Chairman of the Committee—referred to whistleblowing. Forces locally have their own systems in place to allow officers to blow the whistle. Officers can report a concern directly to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, as I confirmed to the Chairman in a letter in April, and they can do so under any circumstances. The IPCC has a national dedicated hotline, and as I mentioned to the Chairman when he raised these matters with me earlier in the year, officers can use it with a degree of anonymity, should they wish to do so.

On 22 July, the Home Secretary announced plans to strengthen protections for whistleblowers in the police. In the first instance, the Government will create a single national policy for police forces on whistleblowing to set out best practice and ensure consistency of approach across all forces. Forces will also be required to publish information on the number of conduct issues raised by officers and staff and on the action taken by the force as a result.

A public consultation later this year—by definition, it is not that far away—will consider a range of further proposals to protect police whistleblowers. In a letter to the Chairman of the Committee, I set out—as the Home Secretary did in a letter of 7 April—some of the options being considered as part of that work.

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[Norman Baker]

I am not in a position to go into the case of PC James Patrick in great detail, and I hope Members will understand. Clearly, the commissioner is ultimately responsible for how the Metropolitan police operates. However, I can confirm that we will strengthen protections for police whistleblowers. I can also confirm, as I said a moment ago, that police officers have the right to access the IPCC, should they wish to do so, on matters in their force.

[Mr Jenkin]

The Minister talks about access to the IPCC, and I am glad he has clarified that. PC Patrick clearly understood he had to go through his line management to have his complaint referred, and he was not allowed to do that, so that was either a mistake or there has been a change, and if the Minister could clarify what that is, I would be grateful. It has to be understood that going to this anonymised hotline really does not provide any protection at all. What is the IPCC meant to do to pursue the complaint? It will go back to the force and say it has had a complaint about such and such. Of course, those on the force will instantly know who has complained, unless they are completely stupid, which they are not—they are detectives, after all. The anonymous hotline sounds good in principle, but it does not provide the protection that whistleblowers need; they need immunity from disciplinary proceedings while the complaint is being investigated. Even if it is shown to be illegitimate and wrongly founded, they still need protection, providing they made it in good faith.

[Norman Baker]

I know the Chairman of the Committee feels strongly about this matter; indeed, it was central to his Committee’s report, so it might be helpful if I put on record part of the letter I wrote to him on 4 April this year. I confirmed that if

“an officer is dissatisfied with the way their concerns have been dealt with by their force, or they do not feel comfortable raising their concerns with their force in the first place, they can raise their concerns directly with the Independent Police Complaints Commission…The IPCC runs a dedicated telephone hotline specifically for police officers and staff…Officers can raise their concerns with the IPCC anonymously or in confidence…We are looking at a range of possible options, including… anonymity for the whistleblower from the point at which the allegation is made…‘sealed’ investigations so that, for a set period, no-one under investigation knows that it is happening so as to preserve evidence and prevent collusion…immunity from disciplinary/misconduct proceedings or prosecution…financial incentives for whistleblowers, for example, a share of recovered criminal assets from the case…protection against vexatious or malicious allegations.”

Those options are under consideration. I mentioned that a consultation will start shortly, and it is open to my hon. Friend and his Committee to make representations accordingly.

Let me turn now to the issue of “no crimes” and sexual offences, which were mentioned by the Opposition spokesman and by the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins)—I almost called him my hon. Friend because we have taken part in a number of debates over the years.

The overall “no crime” rate for rape has fallen year on year under this Government, from 12.6% in 2009-10 to 7.3% in 2013-14. It is encouraging that a number of forces have stated a determination to further bring down “no crime” rates for rape, and the HMIC rape monitoring group data provide PCCs and chief constables with core information to drive improvements in their response to rape.

The then Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims—my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green)—and I wrote to chief constables and PCCs in February, encouraging them to use the figures to improve the response to victims of rape, and we stressed that

“every allegation of rape should be recorded as a crime at the point it is reported, when it is reported without question or challenge.”

That will drive up some of the figures we are seeing.

I entirely agree with the hon. Member that a shift is taking place—the Government is encouraging this, but it is also where society is going—on what we might call crimes against the person. In the past, a lot of these crimes have not been taken seriously. The hon. Gentleman said domestic abuse behind closed doors was not a matter the police got involved in in the past, and that has to change. Clearly, there has been an issue with child sexual exploitation, which concerns everybody in the House, and society has to take it more seriously. Some police forces have also failed to deal properly with rape, and there is no point pretending otherwise. We have to sort these matters out, and we are making significant progress.

That work will lead to a change in the focus of the police. Fortunately, we are seeing a significant decline in what might be called traditional crimes, and we are seeing more reporting and more recording of them. However, I should make it plain that the reporting and recording of them is not the same thing as the number of incidents that occur—that is a different matter entirely. For example, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham mentioned the figures that came out today. In the police recorded crime figures, there is an 11% increase in violent crimes; in the crime survey for England Wales, there is a 23% decrease. Those figures are not wrong; they just mean that the police are now more accurately reporting and recording. That is what Members on both sides of the House are trying to get to, and it is a good thing.

We will, therefore, see more emphasis on these matters, and so we should. I want to leave Members in no doubt whatever that crimes such as domestic abuse, rape and child sexual exploitation, which is an abominable crime, are very high on my priority list, as well as that of the Government and, I believe, the House. That is reflected in what Ministers say; it is also increasingly reflected in what the police are doing, and they are recording these matters more sensibly and more accurately than they were; and it reflects where society is as well.

That will lead to an increase in reporting of historical offences, where people did not have the confidence to come forward before, and of offences that take place now, which people may not have wanted to report in the past, and which I hope they will have the confidence to report now. I encourage anyone who has been subjected to a crime of violence to report it to the police and make sure that they pursue that matter if they feel that the police are not taking it as seriously as they should. Violent offences such as rape are of course devastating crimes that ruin lives. We expect every report to be taken seriously, every crime to be recorded, every investigation to be conducted thoroughly and professionally, and every victim to be treated with dignity. We recognise that vulnerable victims are often unwilling or unable to go directly to the police. That is why it is vital that the police take crimes passed on to them by third parties seriously, and record them appropriately. Many victims will of course feel that they want to go to a non-statutory person in the voluntary sector, for example, to let them know about those matters, so the police need to take that into account in how they deal with the issues.

Last year, the prevalence of sexual assault recorded by the crime survey was the lowest ever since its introduction in 2004-05. Nationally, police recorded crime figures showed an increase of 21% in all sexual offences, and a 29% increase in recorded rape, so I think it is encouraging that more victims have the confidence to come forward. We know rape and sexual violence are under-reported crimes and want to correct that. We want more people to report to the police, and more cases to be brought to justice. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington mentioned the increase in rape, so I want to mention that rape prosecutions were up 5.3% in 2013-14 and rape convictions were up as well, so there is a helpful effect now coming through the court system.

Sexual offences are one of the six main crime types reviewed by HMIC as part of its audit of crime recording quality. The first tranche of the reports has been published, and the remaining force reports are expected to be published shortly. We want PCCs and chief constables to use the findings and figures to improve the way their force responds to rape and supports victims. It is encouraging that some forces have already announced reviews of earlier “no-crime” decisions following the HMIC reports. Vera Baird, the Northumbria police and crime commissioner, was mentioned in that regard in the debate. The new rape action plan, led by the Crown Prosecution Service and the national policing lead for rape, will aid the Government’s drive to ensure that every report of rape is treated seriously and every victim is given the help they deserve.

Whether the role and composition of the Crime Statistics Advisory Committee should be reviewed is a matter for that committee and the UK Statistics Authority. The Home Secretary values its advice and I spoke to the committee recently to stress the importance that the Government places on the ability to ensure that the public have accurate, reliable crime figures.

I want to pick up a few points made by hon. Members during the debate. I agree with the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) that the emphasis must be on core policing values. That is exactly right, and I also agree that we must deal with the under-reporting of sexual crimes, as I mentioned a moment ago. I think that the reason for it is, frankly, that in some cases the police have not been as sympathetic or treated those crimes as seriously as they might, or recorded them as they should have. Those matters are now being addressed, as I have suggested, and I think that the police are making good progress.

[Norman Baker]

It is dangerous to assume that the only way to change the culture is to have women in key positions. The Home Secretary is a woman, and I have not noticed that effect. It is important to change men’s attitudes. That is how we will ultimately make progress—by changing the way men look at things.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham referred to the conflict—or the different messages coming out—given the decrease shown in the crime survey figures compared with police recorded crime. I hope that I have dealt with that matter. Police recorded crime is catching up with the crime survey by recording more accurately. That is the explanation—the divergence between them is now closing. That also explains, as I think I set out, why the figure for sexual offences is up.

The hon. Member for Luton North referred to his concern about crimes of violence. I agree with him about that, as I have said. He slipped in a suggestion that his party tends to have a more liberal view on home affairs matters. I have not noticed that in my time at the Home Office; liberal is not the word that I would use to describe the shadow Home Secretary and her team. However, the hon. Gentleman is entitled to his view; perhaps he is in the more liberal element of his party. I do not know.

I agree that we need a shift in policing. It may interest the House to know that I have established two panels with that in mind. One is a crime prevention panel, which is considering the steps that can be taken to reduce crime before it happens. That can involve a range of things, including designing crime out of buildings and some technological solutions. That panel of experts has some good ideas. There is also an horizon-scanning panel, considering where crime will be going in 10 to 15 years’ time, with experts from all parts of society, including young people. Their ability to suggest where online crime might go is much better than mine or the other panel members’. That has been a useful exercise and recommendations will be made shortly, which I am sure the House will be interested in. I mention that because it picks up the shift in crime, which relates to the shift in policing that will have to be made, in relation to crimes against the person. I think that it will be a greater priority for the police in the years ahead.

The Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington, was a little unhelpful in his description of the crime survey. He appeared to cast doubt on its value, calling it far from ideal. It is the same one that his party’s Government ran for 13 years. We have not changed it; any change that we are making is to strengthen it, to bring in some of the issues that he and other hon. Members mentioned. The crime survey is regarded throughout the world as the gold standard. It has been running since 1981, and it captures most crimes and enables trends over long periods of time to be discerned.

[Mr Jenkin]

There has been a substantial reduction in the sample size of the crime survey, and it does not capture a lot of crime where there is a growth trend, such as cybercrime. We need to consider the crime survey, and I reserve the right of my Committee to conduct a proper inquiry in future into the crime survey for England and Wales.

[Norman Baker]

I do not pretend that the crime survey is perfect, but I think calling it far from ideal is over-egging the pudding.

As to whether plastic card fraud is covered, evidence from the crime survey on such crime shows a fall, from 6.4% of card holders falling victim in 2009-10 to 5.2% in the year ending June 2014. That fall is broadly in line with the reduction in crime in the survey during the same period. It would be disingenuous to imply that that such crime is not captured, or that including it would skew the figures dramatically. Indeed, the Office for National Statistics, which is of course independent of the Government, made the point in a press briefing this morning that the pattern of plastic card crime and victimisation in recent years would not change recent downward trends in the overall crime survey figures. It was fairly strong on that point.

Figures for the number of victims of plastic card fraud have been published since 2005-06 but have not been included in the headline count in the crime survey, for several reasons, including concerns about double counting of frauds and thefts, and questions about whether the victim is the card issuer or the issuing bank. However, we know that the number of holders of plastic cards who have been subjected to such fraud has declined during the relevant period.

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[Mr Jenkin]

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Gray. It is a pleasure to conclude this debate under your chairmanship.

I commend my right hon. Friend the Minister on the comprehensive nature of his response, which I will come to in a moment. It underlines the advantage of a Westminster Hall debate: the devoted few can turn up and discuss at length, and cross-examine the Minister at length on, the issues raised in a report. I speak as one who was a little bit cynical about the Westminster Hall idea when it was first mooted.

I thank all hon. and right hon. Members who contributed to this debate, and I particularly thank Committee members, present and not present, who have supported this work. I think that they will agree that this has been one of the most exciting, influential and important reports that we have produced in this Parliament. It is already having quite an impact, alongside the impact of others, whom I commend, who are having to put this matter right.

I welcome the support of the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) for this report. He was, if I caught him correctly—if I may intrude on an internal debate in the Labour party—questioning the wisdom of the Labour party’s decision to abolish police and crime commissioners in what appears to be a precipitate way.

[Mr Nicholas Brown]

Yes, the hon. Gentleman did catch me correctly.

[Mr Jenkin]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s courage in breaking the rules, as all ex-Chief Whips do; they all finish up ignoring the injunctions of their own Whips.

Police and crime commissioners or elected mayors have been agents of change in this debate; I have witnessed it myself. They are there as people to talk to who are directly accountable to their publics, albeit that the turnouts were lousy and the by-election was a fiasco. There is great opportunity to build for the future. I hope that the shadow Minister will reflect on the fact that we want more democracy and more accountability, not less. Let us see how we can improve the institution, not just go back to what was there before—to anonymous, ineffective police committees that may have contained many worthy people, but people who did not have the profile, legitimacy or resource to carry out the function of local police accountability that we need them to carry out.

I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), who brought our attention to today’s ONS release about the crime figures, and to the difference between police recorded crime and the crime survey for England and Wales. That early pointer should perhaps have led to more action more quickly on this subject, because it indicated that police recorded crime was falling fasting than the survey suggested could be justified, and that should have been acted on sooner.

The hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), whom I nearly call my hon. Friend because he sits on the Committee with me, emphasised rightly that we want a society in which we can live without fear of crime, and where we can send our children out to play in the streets without fear. I certainly had that kind of childhood, as he did. I suspect that most of our constituents can still give their children such a childhood, but the fear of crime drives people to be risk-averse and fearful. That is why police and crime commissioners should be setting targets on how to reassure their public that they live in safe neighbourhoods, safe counties and safe cities. Essex, for example, is one of the safest counties to live in, but on talking to people about crime, it is clear that they do not believe that. We do not talk about crime in terms of reassurance; we tend to highlight what is going wrong and mount campaigns to defeat crime, which just increases fear of crime. The hon. Gentleman raises an apposite point.

I am grateful to the shadow Minister for speaking so comprehensively in support of this report. I am mindful of what he said about the crime survey for England and Wales. We had some evidence, but did not feel that we had enough to make comprehensive recommendations. The Committee may embark on another inquiry, although possibly in another Parliament, because we are running out of time in this one.

There is an issue about how to keep the crime survey for England and Wales up to speed and, indeed, how to keep its sample large enough so that we can have regionally and locally specific information. At the level at which we conduct the survey, local information is completely meaningless, because the sample sizes locally are much too small. In that regard, we are entirely dependent on police recorded crime to tell us what is going on, which is why those are such important statistics.

Again, I commend my right hon. Friend the Minister on his comprehensive reply to this debate. He emphasised that nobody has an interest in having inaccurate crime statistics. I recognise that, as do the police. He listed a number of actions being taken, including the responsibility of Ministers to clarify the respective roles, responsibilities and tasks—the various component parts of the system—in relation to producing crime figures. The Home Office is now taking much more responsibility for that, and laudably so. In my conversations with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, she responded positively to this report. I am grateful to her and to my right hon. Friend the Minister for their responses.

The Minister mentioned the force crime registrars. I reluctantly accept that the practicality of our recommendations in that respect could have been refined. I welcome his point on reporting; access to the chief constable is vital and the relevant people should be able to go directly to the chief constable when they are concerned. Their training is important, too.

The Minister emphasised the obligation to report a crime, even if it is subsequently to be no-crimed. He does not question that that discretion has to exist. He talked a bit about the target-driven culture, but said this was a matter for operational independence. It took a long time—for me—for the penny to drop in respect of how wasteful it is for organisations to try to function without the necessary trust and integrity in relationships between the people working within them.

On this business of misreporting crime, I cannot emphasise enough to the House that when all that was in the media, I walked around the Palace, my constituency and London and spoke with police officers. I asked them, “What do you think of police recorded crime? Have you heard about this?” Absolutely to a man and a woman, they would say, “Oh, we all knew that that was going on.” The cynicism with which they expressed their contempt for their command chain for allowing something to continue under its nose, month after month, year after year, because it was in its interest, cannot be overstated.

It sounds as though I am being very hard on police leadership and saying that they are all very bad people. I have been taken to task by senior police officers and police and crime commissioners for being too outspoken on this matter, but I believe that we have an opportunity to release the energy pent up in the anger and frustration on this issue, and use it to ensure better policing and that we use our resources much better, instead of hiding information within the system and suspiciously looking up and down the command chain and fighting the authorities within the police. A genuine atmosphere of openness and co-operation would release energy and resources to serve the public better.

Essex police is having a real root-and-branch think about how it applies the ethics code. It is releasing people to have conversations about how they regard and treat each other in a way that has not happened before. That needs to happen in every constabulary. There will be some people who feel threatened by those conversations and think that they undermine their historical position, their authority or how they have done business, and they will fight it. They are the ones who need to go. The vast majority of police officers will feel, “At last, we are talking about the real stuff and we will get stuff done better than we have ever done it before, because we will tell each other the truth.”

It is the lack of truth behind these statistics and the way that they have been falsified—in some cases very badly—that indicate that all has not been well in the culture and ethics of the police, and that is why I lay so much emphasis on the recommendation that the Committee on Standards in Public Life holds an inquiry. Public confidence demands it. We have had Hillsborough, Savile and the Lawrence affair. So many things have left a big question mark and a deep scar on the public’s confidence in policing. It is not that the police are bad people; they are good people who might have got into some bad habits. That happens in every organisation. To change habits and behaviour is the hardest and most painful thing to do in any change programme in any organisation, but it has to be done. We have the opportunity to do it on the back of this inquiry. I am not sure that the Minister has yet grasped the scale of the problem and the scale of the opportunity to improve policing. I leave it at that.

I am grateful to the Minister for reiterating the points he made in his letter to me on whistleblowers. He emphasised the need to consider immunity from disciplinary proceedings for whistleblowers. That is incredibly important. What we are doing in the health service, with the post-Mid-Staffs inquiry and all that, is exactly parallel to what we need to do in the police, and to what is happening in our fire service in Essex. It is about empowering people who have to tell the truth. At their best, that is how the armed forces have always worked. There is a belief sometimes that in the uniformed services, it always has to be about command and control, instilling discipline and people doing as they are told. Relationships in the armed forces at their best are not transactional in that way; they are about sharing intent, understanding objectives, supporting each other through tasks and then reviewing and learning from the mistakes.

Everyone makes mistakes. I spoke to a rather more traditional senior police officer, who is now in the House of Lords, who told me that his philosophy of police leadership was that provided the officer could explain that what they did on the night was the right thing to do on the basis of the information they had at the time, he would always back them. It is that kind of supportive leadership that most chief constables understand and aspire to, but it obviously has not existed for police recorded crime. It does not exist all the time in all police forces in the way that it should, which is why we have such an opportunity. Whistleblowers are an important part of leadership by involvement, listening, understanding and supporting. The shutting down of people who try to tell the truth is one of the indicators that an organisation is not functioning optimally. That is what we want. [Interruption.]

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order.

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[Mr Jenkin]

Finally, the Minister mentioned the crime survey for England and Wales. We may return to that, although I might not be on the Committee in the next Parliament. I might not even be here; we always have to remember that. I very much welcome his emphasis on sexual crimes and credit card crimes, but we need to look at the new kinds of crime emerging in our modern, globalised, electronic society and how we deal with them. We need to ensure that they are picked up in a crime survey that is truly comprehensive.

I am proud of the work that the Committee has done, and I am grateful for the support that members of the Committee have given me on this report and in all our work. I am also grateful to those who have contributed to the debate. I hope that we will continue to contribute to a positive debate on the improvement of policing in this country.

Question put and agreed to.

The UK’s Justice and Home Affairs Opt-outs

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hanson]

I want to focus on some key issues that, again, the Home Secretary mentioned. Which rational hon. or right hon. Member of this House would not want a prisoner transfer agreement between European nations? Which rational person in this House would want to have trials in absentia because of the lack of an agreement? Which rational person would not want the joint operation teams, which the Home Secretary mentioned, to bring criminals to justice? Which right hon. or hon. Member would not want supervision orders across EU borders? Which right hon. or hon. Member would not want the collection of fines across Europe, Eurojust tackling serious organised crime or, indeed, the arrest warrant to bring criminals back to justice?

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

It would be better if we conducted this debate on the basis that we are all in favour of those things. It is the means of achieving them that we are discussing. The idea that, because an hon. Member is against the European arrest warrant, he is against all those things is insulting and stupid.

[Mr Hanson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution, but what those effective means are is a fair debate to have. I believe, as I think his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary does, that those things are best done through European co-operation. Indeed, the European arrest warrant has been of interest today, so let me quote from a statement made last year:

“Since 2009 alone, the arrest warrant has been used to extradite from the UK 57 suspects for child sex offences, 86 for rape and 105 for murder…63 suspects for child sex offences, 27 for rape and 44 for murder were extradited back to Britain to face charges. A number of these suspects would probably have not been extradited back to Britain without the arrest warrant. We owe it to their victims, and to their loved ones, to bring these people to justice.”—[Official Report, 9 July 2013; Vol. 566, c. 178.]

That was the Home Secretary, speaking last year. I say to the hon. Gentleman that, irrespective of his views, those individuals were brought back by that arrest warrant. The alternative suggestion, made by the right hon. Member for Wokingham, is one where we negotiate X number of individual arrest warrants—

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[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow a brother knight. I take this opportunity to echo the comments of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) on becoming a brother knight. The whole House should congratulate you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on having become a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, an order of chivalry considerably more senior than that of us mere Knights Bachelor. I can think of no better way of spending my birthday than in group therapy with brother knights, my hon. Friends the Members for Stone, for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), for Aldridge-Brownhills (Sir Richard Shepherd), for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) and for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), so it has been a good debate.

The issue before us is what is in the national interest, what is in the interests of our constituents, and what will make us safe. In that regard I thought it might be helpful to ask Thames Valley police what they thought about the European arrest warrant. I have rather a high respect for Thames Valley police. I have lived in the Thames valley pretty much all my life, and those of us who are Members of Parliament for constituencies in the Thames valley are rather proud of Thames Valley police. They directed me to evidence on the European arrest warrant that was submitted to the House of Lords in 2012 on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers. ACPO consulted chief constables and police authorities around the country. It was seeking to give advice to the House of Lords on which parts of the opt-out should be opted back into, and it recommended above all else that the European arrest warrant be opted back into under the same arrangements as were then in place.

[Mr Jenkin]

When did this House decide to abdicate to ACPO on matters of civil liberty or constitutional importance?

[Sir Tony Baldry]

I should have thought that, on a matter of law and order, even my hon. Friend would think it might just be sensible to take the advice of police forces up and down the country. Whatever we do in the House ought to be evidence-based, and I should have thought the evidence from police authorities and police forces around the country might be rather cogent and sensible evidence in these circumstances.

The ACPO assessment confirmed that the European arrest warrant is the most important of all the measures in the area of justice and home affairs. Most of the police forces and chief officers—I am sure that if my hon. Friend, for example, were to ask the chief constable of Essex and the Essex police force, they would make this point to him as well—believe that opting out of the European arrest warrant and relying on alternative arrangements would result in fewer extraditions, longer delays, higher costs, more offenders evading justice, and increased risks to public safety. They went on to say that the European arrest warrant

“has been in operation for eight years and has now become a mainstream tool. . . In 2010/11 the UK received 5,382 EAW requests and made 221 EAW requests to other EU states. The UK surrendered 1,149 individuals (approximately 7% of which were UK nationals, the other 93% being fugitives to the UK).The UK had 93 people surrendered to it.”

ACPO observed:

“These trends in extradition reflect the increasing international patterns of crime and offending. Open borders across Europe, free movement of EU citizens, low cost air travel, cheap telecommunications, the internet and the expansion of criminal networks across national boundaries are all contributory factors to the growth in extradition requests. These are irreversible changes which need to be matched by increasing flexibility on the part of European law enforcement and criminal justice agencies.”

ACPO went on to say:

“Further evidence of these changes is to be found in data concerning arrests. Recent data gathered by the MPS”—

the Metropolitan police service—

“in the first quarter of 2012 showed that of 61,939 people arrested in London, 8,089 were nationals from EU countries (13%) and 9,358 were foreign nationals from outside the EU (15%). The presence of fugitives from justice fleeing to the UK is a significant public safety issue. In 2011/12 the MPS received 50 EAWs for homicide, 20 for rape, and 90 for robbery. Each of these cases represents a person who is wanted for a serious crime who fled to the UK. There is strong evidence to show that foreign criminals who come to UK continue to offend when in the UK. There is a real risk that opting out of the EAW and relying on less effective extradition arrangements could have the effect of turning the UK into a ‘safe haven’ for Europe’s criminals.”

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[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I am grateful to have the opportunity to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry). The burden of his case appears to be that the efficacy of any extradition arrangements should override any other balanced argument about what might be affected by them. He demonstrates how easy it is to be seduced by expediency, convenience, efficiency and pressure from the police, who have only one objective, and that is not to create more of the stronger human rights or protections for citizens that they feel obstruct their task of maintaining law and order. That is why this House does not abdicate decisions on matters of constitutional importance or human rights to ACPO.

The Abu Hamza case took so long because we had lost control of our law and because we no longer control the human rights jurisprudence in our courts. The lesson of that case is precisely the opposite of what my right hon. Friend suggests. We should take control of our own laws by enacting laws from this place rather than abdicating authority to other places, least of all to foreign powers.

I was struck in this debate by how my right hon. Friend wanted to caricature the objections to the provisions, saying that anybody who is obsessed with the issue of Europe will stand up and object to anything. I am a trustee of the Parliament choir and last night we sang alongside our German counterparts, the Bundestag choir, in Westminster Hall. I stood shoulder to shoulder with a fellow bass from Germany and that is the kind of unity, brotherhood and friendship with our European partners that we want to demonstrate. It should be possible to discuss the practical arrangements we have with each other without being impugned as some kind of right-wing xenophobe, but I am afraid that my right hon. Friend fell into that trap.

Another striking point about this debate is that although the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the former Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty), and the Chairman of the Justice Committee, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), each expressed support in principle, they were a great deal more chary about the consequences and effects of signing up to these arrangements than either of the Front-Bench speakers.

I take on board what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said about the additional protections that she thinks she has obtained for the exercise of the European arrest warrant, whereby we now have domestic legislation in place to deal with matters of disproportionality and dual criminality. That goes to the heart of the wider context of this debate as to whether we really control the terms of engagement that we are entering into with this instrument and whether this House has any control over the terms of engagement that our law has with our membership of the European Community.

This debate exposes the dislocation between the words of our political leaders and their actions. What we are discussing today feeds the discontent and disillusion that people feel about our politics and politicians and about the UK’s relationship with our EU partners. We have seen across the House the same old cosy consensus between those on both Front Benches that encouraged UKIP to such new heights in the recent European elections.

The very title of the debate, which says that it is a general debate on the UK’s justice and home affairs opt-outs, is misleading. The UK has already exercised our opt-outs from the justice and home affairs provisions under the Lisbon treaty. This debate is about whether the Government should opt back in to 35 of these measures. Unlike what was agreed—it pains me to say this—about these provisions at Lisbon by the previous Government, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is proposing a major and permanent transfer of power from the UK to the EU: a transfer of more sovereignty which, nevertheless, escapes a referendum under the European Union Act. This is yet another example of politicians seeking to provide reassurance to voters without actually meaning it. The transfer includes a permanent commitment to the notorious European arrest warrant, which is intended to remove the recourse of a citizen of the UK to the courts in the event of such a warrant, whatever UK legislation is place, with the new provisions themselves vulnerable to being overridden by the European Court of Justice.

The idea that any extradition arrangement we enter into with other EU states would necessarily be subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice is, in itself, an admission of how overreaching the European treaties have become. There are still parts of our law that are immune from the reach of the European Court of Justice. It should be possible to reach an agreement with the European Union that the European Court of Justice will not arbitrate in disputes between the United Kingdom courts and the European courts in such matters. The fact that there is an assumption that the European Court of Justice will preside over any dispute between the United Kingdom and the EU on any matter demonstrates how overarching the reach of the Court under these treaties already is. That goes to the heart of what we are tangentially discussing, which is the future of the UK’s relationship with our European partners.

[Sir William Cash]

I agree with everything my hon. Friend is saying. In the United Kingdom, as compared with all the other 27 member states, we are in a unique position. Our European Communities Act is a voluntary Act. We do not have a written constitution. We are able to make the changes that are necessary to regain our sovereignty. When the Prime Minister says that our national Parliaments are the root of our democracy, he knows, and so do the Government, that we still retain the right to be able to make the changes in order to extract ourselves from situations that we regard as not being in our national interest.

[Mr Jenkin]

I agree with the Prime Minister and with my hon. Friend on that point.

The Prime Minister recently told the “Today” programme that he wants to pursue a relationship with our European partners based on “trade and co-operation” and on being “an independent nation state”. I have to say that I cannot find any strand of consistency between the measures in this Command Paper and the aspirations expressed by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.

May I remind my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who is not in her place at the moment, of what we said in the House about the European arrest warrant when we were in opposition? My right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary, as shadow Home Secretary, said in 2009 that it “undermined civil liberties”. My right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General, as shadow Justice Secretary, said in 2008 that

“once such things are subject to the European Court of Justice and the Commission…the Government will lose all control over standing up for United Kingdom interests in these areas”.—[Official Report, 29 January 2008; Vol. 471, c. 176.]

He also pointed out that the European arrest warrant

“is very different from…an international treaty obligation that the United Kingdom could decide not to follow if it infringed the human rights of those affected. We will be surrendering the final say about that entirely to a supranational body.”—[Official Report, 29 January 2008; Vol. 471, c. 175.]

The Foreign Secretary, as shadow Foreign Secretary, chided the previous Government for not keeping their promises on the EU when he said:

“Time and again they have made promises that they would not hand over powers to Europe, particularly on justice and home affairs, and time and again they have done exactly that, not least through the treaty.”—[Official Report, 4 March 2008; Vol. 472, c. 1684.]

My right hon. Friend now has to eat those words.

The Conservative party manifesto of 2010 promised

“three specific guarantees—on the Charter of fundamental rights, on criminal justice, and on social and employment legislation—with our European partners to return powers that we believe should reside with the UK, not the EU.”

Why have we abandoned that? It was based on a speech the Prime Minister made when in opposition, in which he promised to negotiate the three guarantees, one of which was

“limiting the European Court of Justice’s jurisdiction over criminal law to its pre-Lisbon level, and ensuring that only British authorities can initiate criminal investigations in Britain.”

Why have we abandoned that?

Much more recently, the Prime Minister wrote in The Sunday Telegraph on 16 March 2014 that one of the key changes he would seek in a renegotiation with the EU was:

“Our police forces and justice systems able to protect British citizens, unencumbered by unnecessary interference from the European institutions”.

Why have we abandoned that already? What did he intend to convey to voters in advance of the European elections? Surely not that he intended to do exactly the opposite a few weeks after the close of poll.

This year’s Conservative European election leaflet stated:

“We stand for a new relationship with the EU, bringing power back to Britain and away from Brussels”,

by, among other things,

“taking back control of justice and home affairs”.

If the UK intends to bring powers back in our renegotiation after the next election, it is a strange way for the Prime Minister to begin setting out his stall by giving up the very powers he said he would not give up.

That raises the question about the pressure on Ministers to continue supporting the process of EU integration because of coalition politics. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary’s blank denial that there could be any alternative to the European arrest warrant underlines that she may well have fallen prey to such pressures. Notwithstanding the fact that the main party in power has a different policy and was elected having opposed Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon, Whitehall appears to be continuing to implement those treaties according to a policy of business as usual. More powers are being transferred from the UK to the EU, with EU legislation encroaching ever more on our justice system, as though there had been no change of Government.

I do not doubt that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is acting on advice and with complete integrity, but it may help if I, as Chairman of the Public Administration Committee, remind the House how advice to Ministers works in a coalition. The civil service is enjoined to serve the Government as a whole, not individual party agendas or the different agendas of individual Ministers. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that no serious consideration has been given to any alternative policy of negotiating a permanent bilateral agreement on these matters, like the 170 or so sovereign states that are not members of the EU.

If my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary had been minded to ask for credible submissions to support such a policy and then to act on them, it is not only the status quo in her Department, the Foreign Office and elsewhere that she would have had to fight. She would certainly have had the support of the Conservatives in that—if we were a majority Government, I doubt she would have had the support to act in the way she is acting now—but in this coalition, the quad would have vetoed that policy. It is, therefore, hardly surprising, four years since her appointment, that little work has been done on any alternative policy.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I think it is terribly important that we explain to the public what the quad is about, because it is Westminster-speak and I do not think the public understand that no policy is pursued by civil servants unless four individuals—the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury—sign off on them. Unless they do so, civil servants will not deal with those policies. That is what has stuffed us on the Conservative Benches.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am not suggesting for a moment that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is not sincere in her belief. All I am saying is that the incentives against obtaining alternative advice are massive. If someone goes against the grain of the coalition, they are likely to be stopped at the end of the process anyway, so what is the point? And so we finish up in this position.

That episode highlights how impossible it is to put any political will behind the Prime Minister’s stated aim of a renegotiated relationship with the EU as long as we remain in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, who take a fundamentally opposite view to ours.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I normally agree with everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) says, but I wonder whether this quad thing is a bit of a myth. It is a convenient myth that the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary find useful in explaining why they cannot pursue Conservative policies, but surely the Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary can instruct their civil servants. I cannot believe it—I may be wrong; my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) is the Chair of the Public Administration Committee—but it is an extraordinary way to run a country.

[Mr Jenkin]

It has been made clear throughout the civil service that there can be no policy except Government policy, and Government policy is filtered through the coalition arrangements, over which there is a mutual veto in that unless there is agreement, there is no policy. If the Home Secretary had started out on the premise of an alternative policy—of multilateralism or of a simple bilateral arrangement on such matters—she would have been up against not only the vested interests in the EU, with their determination to block this kind of thing and the residual resistance of the status quo, but the added pressure against attempting to do such a thing that exists in the way the civil service operates under the coalition. I am afraid that that is just a fact. On some occasions, Ministers have asked for papers or legislation to be prepared on their behalf, and there has been a blanket refusal because it is not Government policy if it has not been approved by the coalition; that is a fact.

The episode demonstrates that another year of coalition is another year of paralysis and inertia on EU policy, because the machinery of government is hostage to the coalition. That is another reason why we should either end the coalition in the run-up to the election or, indeed, call an earlier general election. I believe that we will rue the day that we voted—I did not, but the House did—for fixed-term Parliaments.

The present paralysis also makes nonsense of the Government’s current policy on the EU. I admire the stand made by the Prime Minister over Mr Juncker, but it just shows that although the Prime Minister may get permission within the coalition to make what amount to grand gestures, he cannot get permission for any policy of substance that purports to advance the objectives he has so ably set out.

The decision on the justice and home affairs opt-ins should be seen in that very serious context, because there are very serious implications. The way in which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s challenge to Mr Juncker was dismissed at the Ypres summit indicates that the EU will resist any fundamental reform. That could not be clearer from the events at the summit. We saw not only how the ambiguity in the treaties will continue to be exploited by those who want to carry on the process of centralisation, but how the UK’s attempt to boost the role of national Parliaments—the fourth principle from the Bloomberg speech—was all but eliminated from the final conclusions, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash).

There should be no need in this House to reiterate the importance of our national Parliament to our democracy, or to point out that under the UK’s constitution Parliament is, and must remain, supreme. However, the Ypres summit and its decisions underline how EU treaties and institutions deny such an essential element of the UK’s constitutional autonomy under the present terms of membership. Since Maastricht, we have seen that opt-outs, subsidiarity and talk of different degrees or speeds of EU integration make no difference to the direction of the EU. Consequently, the legal protections concerning disproportionality and dual criminality are potentially meaningless.

Incidentally, the removal of the words “ever closer union” from the preamble of the EU treaties would make no change at all to how the European Commission, Court and Parliament behave. It would not remove a single treaty base of a single EU legal instrument or court ruling, and I emphasise that it would not prevent the European Court of Justice from setting aside any domestic protection that we may enact in respect of the European arrest warrant. That is because the EU treaties are not consistent with the UK’s constitutional position, or with the Prime Minister’s stated desire for the UK to be an independent nation state.

The practical importance of addressing the issues set out by the Prime Minister—they include immigration, freedom of movement, the single market and energy prices—is self-evident. However, any concessions that we obtain will be nugatory in their effect unless we also obtain recognition of the main principle at stake—namely, that of the supremacy of the United Kingdom Parliament.

In the UK, all EU laws and treaties rest upon the UK Parliament, which voluntarily agreed to the 1972 Act. This took place in the context of the unambiguous assurance that national sovereignty would be maintained after we joined. That was set out in the 1971 White Paper. Many subsequent treaties, and measures such as these, have been adopted by Act of Parliament, but the fundamental and ultimate role of the UK Parliament has never been vitiated. Had the UK adopted the EU constitution, that might have changed, but for now at least, the European Communities Act 1972 remains the foundation Act, and every EU law in the UK is subject to the constitutional principle of voluntary acceptance by the UK Parliament.

Those final conclusions of the European Council, along with so many other statements from other EU leaders and from European institutions such as the Commissioner and the European Parliament, do not accept our view. They speak and act as though the European Parliament is paramount, and attribute only a subsidiary role to national Parliaments, including our own. This reflects the political reality, which we Conservatives spelled out at the time, that the Lisbon treaty is the EU constitution in all but name. This justice and home affairs decision demonstrates that the Government are doing nothing of practical value to challenge that. The lack of any specific constitutional provision in the Lisbon treaty to make it autochthonous—that is, dependent on its own provisions for its authority, like a constitution—does not prevent the majority of EU states or the EU institutions from behaving in that way.

This question of constitutional supremacy has now reached a critical point. The point in the final Ypres conclusions about the need for “strong and credible” EU institutions but no more than

“closer involvement of national parliaments”,

underlines the fact that the EU is set against anything that seeks to reassert the supremacy of the UK Parliament in the European Union. It is beyond any doubt that such a proposal would even be considered, because it would take only one other member state to veto any such proposal.

In these circumstances, it would be impossible for any leader of the Conservative party to campaign to vote to stay in the European Union, either in a referendum or at the next general election, without making it clear that he had a clear bottom line in the renegotiations that our new relationship with the EU must be based on the supremacy of our national Parliament, at least, and that otherwise we would have to leave the treaties and seek that new relationship from outside.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

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[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

It is a particular pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), although I am delighted that the Lord Chancellor will reply to the debate, because I believe he is the one person remaining in the Government who still believes what he believed in opposition. It is reassuring that at least some people do not find the trappings of office take them away from their previous beliefs.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) mentioned, we have already looked at the falsehood that is in the title of this debate. We are meant to be debating the opt-outs, but they were decided a year ago. We are debating the opt-ins. That is all of a piece with the spin and the flimflam around this issue. We are not trying to stick to the facts. We have had bold promises—promises raised by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz)—about consultation with Parliament and how we would be kept fully informed: a fine promise and constitutionally proper, but regrettably ignored.

We found out some information about the Prüm declarations not from a statement to this House or from evidence given to a Select Committee, but via a website called Statewatch, which reproduces leaked documents. It reproduced a “Limité” document from the European Union. “Limité” documents from the European Union can be shared with the European Scrutiny Committee and we then hold them confidentially. This one was not, perhaps because what it said was rather embarrassing. It stated:

“The UK government has also indicated that in a number of other cases it will set in motion a process towards the subsequent opting in to certain other instruments of particular importance.”

So it is not 35 opt-ins; it is more than 35, which they are not willing to tell us about through proper processes. We find out through leaked documents. Actually, it is not 35 anyway, because 14 were already subject to the block opt-out. So we are starting at 49, not 35, and the spin around it tries to lessen the impact of what is happening.

The failure to inform Parliament is, I think, even worse. There was a Council meeting on 24 June, after which the European Union put out a press release stating that

“the Council noted the conclusion reached between the Commission and the UK on the list of non-Schengen ex-third pillar measures which the UK will seek to rejoin”—

I emphasise “conclusion”. The written statement from the Minister provided to the House about a week later—we should note the delay before we were informed—said that

“the UK Government and the Commission had reached an understanding”.—[Official Report, 30 June 2014; Vol. 583, c. 48WS.]

There is a significant difference between an understanding and a conclusion: one has a finality about it, which does not leave much room for parliamentary consultation, while the other implies a continuing process. We have thus had a series of failures properly to inform Parliament—a failure to be entirely straight with the British people.

The effects are severe. The change from the third pillar to Lisbon is a major transfer of sovereignty, as established by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North, who quoted the Government’s own words in saying that. It is not, however, only the Government and the European Scrutiny Committee that make this clear, as it can be seen in the Home Affairs Select Committee, too. This is important because that Select Committee is not made up of shaven-headed Eurosceptics; it is chaired by a former Minister for Europe who views himself very much as a pro-European. His Committee’s report said:

“If the Government proceeds with the opt-in as proposed, we note that it will not result in any repatriation. Indeed, the increased jurisdiction of the ECJ may result in a net flow of powers in the opposite direction.”

Yet we have heard statements from Ministers saying precisely the reverse. There must be a thin line between on the one hand the point at which Ministers say things that are different from what they say to House of Lords Select Committees and from what reports of respected Committees of this House have said and on the other hand the sin of misleading Parliament. I know we will watch like hawks to ensure that that thin line is never breached.

Of the much-trumpeted opt-outs of nearly 100 items, 43 never applied to the United Kingdom in the first place. I have a list of the remainder. I asked 190 parliamentary questions to establish this list and to find out how many of the items were of any importance. Thirty three have been implemented and will bring no change at all; 12 have been implemented de facto and, again, there will be no change; two have been implemented but never used; and two have not been implemented. That leaves one, the Council Act of 17 June 1998, which has been implemented and will suffer from some change. Excluding Prüm, there is no repatriation of sovereignty at all from any of our opt-outs.

That leads us to the alternatives—those measures that the Government wish to remain within, as is clear from the treaties and from questions of international law. The treaties make it clear that provision is made for transitional arrangements. Hence, there need be no worry about a great chasm opening up on 1 December, when this mass horde of 125 criminals will suddenly appear on our shores, about which we should be terrified. It will not be like that at all because of the transitional arrangements.

Then there is the possibility of bilateral arrangements. The Home Secretary’s response on bilateral arrangements was so feeble: we know she has lost her much-respected special adviser, but I had not realised that the person on work experience was now writing her speeches. Just because the European Union does not like it—the Commission indicated that it would not accept it—are we saying that we should not use our power and influence as one of the great nations of the world and even try to negotiate what we want with an international body? Should we immediately kowtow and give in? What sort of a Home Secretary takes that approach?

[Mr Jenkin]

It seems from the stance adopted by the Government that we are being invited to believe that the European Union is a deeply unreasonable institution that holds very hard and fast positions on which it is not prepared to compromise even in its own interests, let alone the interests of its member states. Does my hon. Friend not think that we should have tried a bit harder?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

That is exactly the point I was making. It bodes ill for any proposal for renegotiation if that is the starting point. The moment the European Union says “We don’t like that very much, chaps” and we say “Oh, we’re frightfully sorry, m’lord”, we are not even going to try. We shall perform the kowtow, that wonderful act performed in front of Chinese emperors, whereby people would abase themselves three times before approaching the throne. That may be appropriate to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, enthroned in splendour as you are, but it is not, I think, the way in which Her Majesty’s Government should behave when dealing with international bodies.

Then there is the European arrest warrant, and the so-called guarantees that we have. As has already been established during the debate, European law trumps Acts of Parliament. So we can say that the European arrest warrant must not apply unless there is dual criminality, but unless the European Union accepts it, that is not the case, and dual criminality does not have to be shown in relation to 32 specified crimes where the arrest warrant applies. What the Prime Minister said to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North during Prime Minister’s Question Time yesterday was, I am sorry to say, not factually accurate.

As for the numbers, I have banged on about them because of the hysteria that we hear from the proponents of the arrest warrant, who claim that our whole nation’s security is dependent on it. On average, 125 people are brought back to this country each year to face trial. In that context, the arrest warrant is to our benefit and in our interest. The people whom we expel we ought to be able to expel under our own law, and would be able to if only we had the gumption to pass our own laws. As was said earlier, we are now willing to sacrifice the fundamental principle of Magna Carta: that no one will be imprisoned, fined or held against their will without the judgment of a court. We are now willing to allow that principle to be abrogated by a Polish magistrate. Surely, wise and good though Polish magistrates may be, it is not worth the theft of a wheelbarrow to undermine something that has been our protector for 799 years.

I want to deal with the politics of this as well, for where does it leave not only the Government but the Conservative party, which had, until a few weeks ago, a really sensible, logical, well-thought-through position on the European Union. It had a strong and sound and firm position, which was to go for renegotiation and repatriate powers. Repatriate powers? When we have just surrendered them? Wave the white flag, and then, two hours later, put up the Union Jack at half mast? Will anyone believe that we have a hope of repatriating powers if we surrender them now? Will anyone think that opting into 35 measures, 49 measures, and a few more secretly, is the beginning of a renegotiation? Will anyone believe the promises made by politicians or the policies on which we stood at the last election—as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North revealed to us—or the soaring oratory of our Prime Minister, who in 2002, in opposing the European arrest warrant, said:

“If someone came before him who had committed an offence that was not a crime in this country, according to the district judge, the Home Secretary would have to say, ‘I am sorry. You may spend time rotting in a Greek or Spanish jail…But there is nothing I can do about it.’”—[Official Report, 9 December 2002; Vol. 396, c. 109.]

So, in 2002, the Prime Minister was worried that this would lead to people rotting in Spanish or Greek jails. Now he thinks that rotting in Spanish or Greek jails seems to be a good thing. I do not see the logic in that, but I equally do not see how anyone can rely on what politicians say if in opposition they have backbone and in government they are jellyfish. It is an entirely hopeless way of attempting to run the country.

Let me end with a reminder of Sir Robert Peel, a great Prime Minister and a distinguished man, one of the most intellectual figures ever to hold that office —and he was Home Secretary as well. When he did his final papers—they were vivas, not papers—so clever was he, so intelligent was he, that the public went to listen to him answering the questions, and he got a first-class degree in classics and mathematics. In 1846, he split the Conservative party. He got through a measure that the Conservatives loathed on the back of Opposition votes—something that may happen with the European arrest warrant—but he stood boldly at the Dispatch Box and said, yes, he had changed his mind, yes, what he now thought was different from what he thought before, but it was essential for the good of the nation.

Do we have that from this Front Bench? Do we have an avowal of the importance of this surrender to Europe, or do we have mealy-mouthed words about the difficulties of negotiation and the problems with coalition? There is not a bold, forthright, intellectual case for change, but merely the convenience of office, and it not only risks damaging the Government and splitting the Tory party, but it surrenders our sovereignty to a body from which we want to get it back. So I say to Her Majesty’s Government,

“Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood . . . then imitate the action of the tiger.”

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure—nay, an honour—to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who speaks with vigour and all the colour that we have come to expect from him. Those of us who have known him since long before 2010 know that he is characteristically forthright on these issues. Whether he is absolutely right on them is another matter, however, and it is to the issue about which he has rightly expressed concern today that I now turn, bearing in mind the time remaining and the need for other speakers to make their contributions.

Yes, the opt-ins do involve some concession of sovereignty. To try to deny that would be wholly wrong. The issue, therefore, is one of competence and the extent to which the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg determines issues that fall to be decided as to the interpretation and operation of the measures, subject to the opt-in. On that, to some degree I share some of the concerns raised by my hon. Friends on the Conservative Benches.

I am an opponent of judicial activism. As a politician who is philosophically of the centre-right, I do not believe that it is for judges to interpret treaties and other documents as living instruments that adapt according to their view of the world at any one time. We see that problem in the Court at Strasbourg and the Court in Luxembourg, but we also see that problem in the courts here in London, here in England, here in Wales, here in Scotland. This is not an issue that is particular to Europe and its institutions. That is a very important point when we remember the nature and scale of the task before us, because, to my mind, this is not a debate between Westminster and Brussels or Luxembourg; this is a debate about whether it is legislators—politicians—who ultimately determine the extent and ambit of our laws, or whether, as increasingly is the case, our laws are interpreted in different ways by judges.

The old certainty of politicians passing and enacting the laws and judges implementing them and making determinations on a case-by-case basis gets more blurred with the passage of the years, and that worries me, as a Conservative, and I know it worries all my fellow Conservatives. I know it worries my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor. We discussed the matter only yesterday in the Justice Committee, and he made some very wise interventions about his concerns about judicial activism.

Therefore, I thoroughly understand and embrace the concerns that are being expressed by my hon. Friends. What I take issue with them on is this: the full extent to which the European Court of Justice will have jurisdiction over the general run of justice and home affairs in this country. I accept that on the opt-out issues it will have jurisdiction, and there are dangers that, as we have seen with other interpretations—for example, of the free movement directive—there could be judicial creep and an extension beyond the original intentions of those who framed the directives we are talking about. But when it comes to the fundamentals of English and Welsh justice, I see no threat to the long-established traditions, customs, laws and practices that we have in our criminal courts. I see no threat to the principle of trial by jury. I see no threat to the inferences that are to be drawn from the exercise by suspects of their right to silence.

We have had debates on these things. I recall going with my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Justice Committee to Brussels to discuss a directive, which is now coming to the fore, about the inferences to be drawn from the exercise by the accused of the right to silence when arrested. We had a lively discussion in the justice directorate-general about the inappropriateness of that directive in its application to the criminal law of England and Wales. That sort of detailed case-by-case, directive-by-directive discussion will be the surest safeguard against the general creep that my hon. Friends and others fear.

[Mr Jenkin]

I admire my hon. Friend’s intellectual honesty in admitting that in respect of the European arrest warrant the activities of the European Court of Justice may lead to judicial creep, which may lead to a “wheelbarrow situation” and so on. If such were to occur, who would be accountable?

[Mr Buckland]

My hon. Friend asks the fundamental question we should always ask, about not just European legislation, but domestic legislation and the way in which we in this House have legislated in an unsatisfactory and ambiguous way that has opened the door to more and more judicial review, more and more challenge and more and more interpretation by domestic courts in ways that were perhaps not envisaged by the legislators. So I repeat the point and turn it back to him: I do not think this is a particular problem at a European level.

[Mr Jenkin]

If a wayward British court makes a judgment that is clearly not intended by Parliament but has arisen because of a perfectly legitimate and understandable interpretation of one of our own statutes, we can hold a Minister accountable, we can ask them to bring forward an amendment to the law and we can change the law. If the same happens in respect of European legislation, how do we hold the law accountable?

[Mr Buckland]

We have mechanisms within the European structure to do that, via the Council of Ministers, renegotiation, treaty change—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jenkin]

There is the flaw in your argument.

[Mr Buckland]

I disagree, and I am more than willing to talk briefly about how we renegotiate these things. Talk about repatriation is unhelpful. If we are going to get actual reform in Europe, we have to look at it across the piece. Addressing the issues of judicial activism and the way in which the ECJ interprets the articles of the European treaties is fundamental to any meaningful renegotiation to deal with the democratic deficit argument that my hon. Friend and others posit.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am very grateful for my hon. Friend’s generosity in giving way. I have served in this House for more than 20 years and I have seen court judgment after court judgment from the ECJ, or indeed from our own courts—in the Factortame case, famously, even a political agreement reached between the member states about our fisheries was overturned by a decision of the court—where the Minister here says that nothing can be done about it. That has been the case time after time. We are moving these decisions, and their consequences, beyond the democratic accountability of the national Parliament.

[Mr Buckland]

But remembering that the competence of the ECJ deals with the application of EU law in the UK, we have to be very careful about the words we use, because very often people misunderstand the full ambit of that Court. Another example would be the way in which case law in Strasbourg is wrongly assumed to be the law of this land—it is not the law of this land and never has been, not even under the much-reviled Human Rights Act. There are little misunderstandings that germinate into a general feeling among the public that we have lost control.

[Mr Jenkin]

We have.

[Mr Buckland]

I disagree. It is up to us in this House and elsewhere to show leadership and to explain to people that we have not lost the degree of control that has been suggested. As much as I admire my hon. Friend, I sometimes think that his is a counsel of despair when it comes to the future of Britain in Europe. It is time for us to remind ourselves that we are still a country with huge influence and that we still have a massive part to play in the affairs and future of the European Union. We are one of the biggest economies in Europe, and there are very many strategic interests that make our membership of the EU good not only for us but for other member states.

Before I resume my seat, I will return to the issues at hand. The European arrest warrant is not only in this country’s interest because we can repatriate UK citizens from other member states who are alleged to have committed crimes in this country; it also ensures that EU nationals who are fleeing and evading justice in their own country can be sent back. Those practical realities bring us back from the theoretical debate that we sometimes have here. We are talking about real lives and the tragedies that surround every criminal case about which we have heard this afternoon, which we know is a real issue for those involved. Let us not forget the human element.

I have gone through the list of measures, and it seems that the principle of mutual recognition of criminal offences, for example, will be very important not because of the way in which we operate the courts in England and Wales but because of the way in which other member states recognise UK criminal convictions, which is an important point. If UK citizens go to other member states and commit offences, it is right and in the general interests of combating crime and properly reflecting criminality that their convictions recorded in the UK are properly recognised. Those are practical measures that not only address the need to combat crime but help to increase trade and commerce—all the efficacy arguments that are a natural part of what it is to be a member state of a developing Union that is the biggest market in the world. It is the continent of which we are a part. I think, therefore, that the practical realities reflected in the opt-in measures are a proper reflection of the absolute need for this country to work hand in hand with other member states and to ensure that we can have a criminal justice system that works well for all British citizens, not just here in the UK but in other parts of the EU.

The European arrest warrant has been properly criticised on the grounds of proportionality. My hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) will shortly wax lyrical on the matter with his customary expertise and I look forward to his contribution with interest, but I would say that the introduction of the amendments on proportionality in recent legislation goes a long way towards addressing the concerns that he and others have repeatedly expressed. I have the same sorts of concerns about the disproportionate use of such a serious measure. The decision to extradite or to remove someone from one jurisdiction to another is a serious step to take.

We have to be practical about this issue, and the Government have done everything they can to ensure that, although we have opted out of the general swath of measures—I think that was the right decision—we are, after looking at the evidence on a case-by-case basis, making the proper decision to opt in to the measures that we are debating today. On that basis, I am happy to support my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench.

Child Abuse

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I think it would be most appropriate for the chairman and panel themselves to decide what to do on that matter, rather than Government trying to tell them what to do. Once the name of the chairman is announced, I am sure that Members of this House who have experience of dealing with these matters will wish to make their views known, but I think it is best to leave it to the chairman and panel to identify how they wish to work and take evidence and comments from people. May I commend the hon. Gentleman, who is another Member of this House who has done a great deal of work on this matter in trying to uncover the truth about those who have been victims?

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement of the overarching inquiry, which is important because if we wish to empower children to resist and report child sex abuse, we need to demonstrate that as adults we are prepared to talk openly about these things. Will she give her view on whether it is correct that no Government record should be destroyed without a record of its being destroyed being kept? If that is what has happened in these 114 cases, is she confident that it is not still happening, and is she satisfied that the Lord Chancellor’s code of practice on the management of records— to which I think the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) referred—is actually being complied with and, indeed, that it is adequate for the purpose?

[Mrs May]

As I indicated in response to the right hon. Member for Blackburn, the panel may well look at the question of record keeping. It is right that there are certain processes in place, as I also indicated in my earlier response. One of the issues we are dealing with is that, over the years and the time period we are looking at, a number of different approaches to record keeping were taken by Government Departments. It is, I think, best practice to identify what has happened to particular records when they are identified, but the practice of what is done has varied over time. That is one of the aspects that we will obviously need to consider.

Migration Statistics

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Walker, for the opportunity to present to the House the Select Committee on Public Administration’s report of the 2013-14 Session on migration statistics. It has proved one of the most controversial that we have produced during this Parliament.

Migration statistics are of supreme importance to public policy and the debate about immigration in this country. National and local government depend on those estimates in planning public services. For reasons of security, we need to know not only how many people are arriving in and leaving the UK, but who they are. Migration statistics help us understand what is happening in British society and the British economy.

Accurate and reliable migration statistics are also important for public trust. How can the public trust politicians’ promises on immigration if we do not have reliable numbers on which to base our policies? One reason why the debate on immigration has become so toxic is that people no longer believe they are being told the truth; they do not even believe that Governments understand what is happening to their own country.

We conducted our inquiry last year and came to a conclusion that everybody in the know about immigration has understood for years, but been loth to say too clearly for fear of the consequences: the immigration statistics produced by the Office for National Statistics and the Home Office are but blunt instruments for measuring, managing and understanding migration to and from the UK, and they are not fit for purpose.

The current sources of migration statistics were established when migration levels were much lower than they are today. Those sources are not adequate for understanding the scale and complexity of modern migration flows, despite attempts in recent years to improve their accuracy and usefulness. Most people are astonished when they learn how the inadequate estimates that we do have are compiled. When a person checks in or out of the country, their passport is scanned, but they are not counted in or out of the country, even if they are a foreign national. The headline immigration, emigration and net migration numbers are annual estimates based on interviews of about 800,000 people stopped at random at ports and airports each year—a tiny fraction of the overall flow of passengers and people in and out of the UK. The method is called the international passenger survey.

The number of non-UK citizens identified from the sample as migrants entering or leaving the UK each year is fewer than 5,000. Most of the numbers that we hear in the immigration debate are based on that tiny sample of people, many of whom might be reticent, to say the least, about giving full and frank answers about where they have come from, who they are, why they are here and where they are going. To be clear, that group includes people entering and emigrating from the UK, so the sample number of immigrants in the survey may be as small as 3,000.

Unsurprisingly, migration estimates based on the international passenger survey are subject to a large margin of error, known to statisticians as the confidence interval: that is, the degree of confidence that it is possible to have about a particular margin of error. As we all know, the Government have stated that they intend to bring net migration—the difference between annual immigration into and emigration out of the UK—down from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands. That is not a 90% cut; in fact, it amounts to about 50%.

On the ONS calculations for net migration as measured by the unadjusted IPS estimate, the 95% confidence interval is plus or minus 35,000, meaning that we can only be 95% certain that the true figure lies within 35,000 of the estimate either way. In other words, the error range is 70,000.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the error margin he gave is one of random variation in a bell curve distribution? Another potential source of variation could be systematic bias in the survey. For instance, if immigrants are not likely to complete the survey or if they say that they are not planning to stay for a long time when they actually are, that would make the margins vary even more.

[Mr Jenkin]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I said, the survey relies on full and frank answers from those being interviewed even to include them. If people say that they are just visiting a relative for a week, they are not counted as migrants. To that extent, the 70,000 range for potential error within the 95% confidence interval is of significant size for the estimate.

If annual immigration is 120,000 or 150,000, there is only a 5% or one in 20 chance that the official figures are on target. The figures could say that the Government are missing their net immigration target by tens of thousands when in fact they are meeting it, or they could show that the UK is meeting its target when in fact it is missing it by tens of thousands. We do not have enough confidence to know. It is clearly a completely inadequate measure of net migration, but we must be careful before dismissing it, because it is all we have.

That degree of confidence applies only to the headline numbers. The ONS estimate simply does not provide sufficient detail to judge properly the social and economic consequences of different types and origins of migration, and the effects of immigration policy on, for example, students or people from particular countries. Nor does it provide any useful idea about international migration in and out of local areas. Efforts to achieve a blunt net migration target are therefore bound to have unintended consequences, such as skills shortages and effects on universities.

The shortcomings of relying on the IPS were highlighted when the 2011 census showed that the population of England and Wales was 465,000 higher than expected, given the recorded number of births and deaths and the estimated level of net migration during the decade since the previous census. The ONS identified several possible causes for the difference but considered that the

“largest single cause is most likely to be underestimation of long-term immigration from central and eastern Europe in the middle part of the decade”,

which of course was not picked up by the international passenger survey. The ONS concluded that the underestimation came partly from taking samples of people from the wrong airports. That is, the IPS sample under-represented airports such as Cardiff and ports such as Newcastle, where more immigrants are coming in than was previously understood.

As a result, this April, the ONS published a revised set of net migration estimates for the United Kingdom for the period 2001 to 2011. Total net migration during that period is now estimated to have been 346,000 higher than previously thought; the original estimate of 2.18 million has been revised to 2.53 million, plus or minus 35,000.

[Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)]

With current technology, there is no reason not to have accurate figures, never mind estimates. Clearly, the most appropriate way to get them is at ports of entry and departure, but I have gone through Heathrow and Gatwick airports and seen enormous queues of people coming in who are non-EU citizens; it is actually quite bad for EU citizens. My only caution is that if we are to get adequate figures, we must ensure that sufficient personnel are made available, so we do not have 24-hour backlogs of people coming through our airports at entry.

[Mr Jenkin]

My hon. Friend highlights the complexity of moving purely to a counting in and counting out system. Only two countries in the world base their immigration and emigration estimates entirely on counting. One is Australia, which is a good example. A less encouraging example is North Korea. However, every other country in the world bases its migration flow estimates on samples, measuring and estimating or a population register. Germany, for example, keeps an up-to-date population register—the equivalent of a census kept constantly up to date—to monitor its migration flows.

We are in a no man’s land at the moment. We neither count effectively nor sample effectively, and even though we have the decennial census, which has provided the correction of 346,000, that does not resolve the problem between censuses. The underestimation of net migration was identified only by the census on a 10-yearly basis, so the ONS is unable to revise its annual estimates of immigration and emigration as components of migration during the same period, even though it knows that they must be wrong. As a result, for the years from 2001 to 2011, our best estimate of net migration each year is not equal to our best estimate of immigration minus our best estimate of emigration. We are into an Alice in Wonderland world of numbers in which we know that our official figures for each year are wrong, but they cannot be changed, as we have no other sources to use.

In all probability, the actual population of the country will be even larger than that recorded in the census. Many people in the country do not consider themselves to be “residents” and thus decide not to complete the census form. Many others, who have overstayed or are in the country illegally for other reasons, are most unlikely to complete the form. Immigration will thus have been even higher in the last decade than was estimated by the census.

The PASC concluded that the UK’s immigration statistics are not fit for purpose. There was some pushback from the Home Office in reaction to our report last summer, but I think we have to regard that as a natural reaction of denial about the failure of the system of immigration statistics that has been building up for decades. The UK Statistics Authority agrees with us in that respect, saying in its response to our report:

“The limitations of the International Passenger Survey (IPS) in particular and UK international migration statistics in general, especially for local areas, have long been known and debated. The Statistics Authority believes that action must now be taken to address this.”

As I mentioned, when we look at smaller groupings within the 3,000 immigrants identified, such as immigrants from the EU or from specific countries, the system becomes even less reliable, as the 95% confidence interval becomes larger relative to the size of the sample, eventually becoming larger than the sample itself.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Jenkin]

I give way to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs.

[Keith Vaz]

I am sorry that I missed the opening remarks of the hon. Gentleman’s very important speech. May I say how pleased I was, and the Home Affairs Committee was, to know that his Committee had undertaken such a thorough examination? One of the big problems has been the absence of a resolution of the issues relating to the e-Borders programme, which was promised to be the best and most effective way of counting people in and out. Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that, years after that programme was introduced and then closed, there is still no resolution of the problem relating to e-Borders?

[Mr Jenkin]

I do share that concern, but if the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will deal with that issue later.

I was talking about the 95% confidence interval in respect of smaller samples relating to individual countries. The ONS will publish estimates of immigrants by country only for the top 15 source countries, because for all the other countries the sample is too small to provide a meaningful estimate—in other words, the number of people from Iran or Afghanistan is actually smaller than the 95% confidence interval itself, so the number is meaningless.

We have vague estimates of the numbers coming in from China, India, Poland, the USA, Australia, Spain, Pakistan, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Nigeria, New Zealand, Lithuania and Hong Kong. Those are the countries for which figures are published. For the other 180 or so countries, no figures are published, so we cannot tell from the data how many Russians, Iranians, South Africans or Romanians are coming to this country.

For the same reason, the ONS migration data cannot provide anything meaningful for local authorities that are trying to work out how migration flows affect their area or to plan for population changes. The UK Statistics Authority also stated:

“The IPS sample size is too small to enable the production of reliable international migration estimates at a local authority level, and cannot realistically be made sufficiently large to achieve robust local estimates.”

The census, which is designed to count every member of the population, provides the only reliable data on the number and characteristics of migrants at local level, but we get it only every 10 years, which is why it was so full of surprises.

In evidence to us, Westminster city council said that the current methodology for estimating migration was not robust enough to support accurate local-level estimates, so that

“the measurement of migration from the perspective of an LA user and as reliable information on our residents is failing”.

The leader of Westminster more or less told us that the only way it can find out the nationalities of the people in the borough is to go around and count them itself. That may be a responsibility that it should take on, but—[Interruption.]

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Order. I say to the official who just approached the Minister: please do not do that again. This is a Chamber.

[Mr Jenkin]

That, perhaps, is one of the shortcomings of Westminster Hall, Mr Walker.

The question is how this situation could be improved. We suggested, and I suggested to the Prime Minister when he came before the Liaison Committee, that we should expand the size of the international passenger survey and therefore increase the size of the migrant sample on which the estimates are based. We were advised that if we spent an extra £15 million on the IPS, that would quadruple its size. That would halve the size of the confidence interval, meaning that there would be a 95% chance that the data were within 17,500 of the estimate, rather than there being a total margin of error, on a 95% confidence interval, of 35,000. That brings the range down, but it is a lot of money for not much improved accuracy and it still helps us only with the headline figures. It does not help us with the quality of the data for smaller groups of migrants or for local areas.

The ONS could see what extra value it could derive from the IPS by, for example, asking respondents for various details, notably passport numbers but also national insurance or NHS numbers, which would allow responses to be linked to administrative data, but that would still not address the fundamental problem of the small sample size.

Alternatively, there could be a survey more specifically targeted at migration. A large-scale face-to-face survey of migrants in the UK has previously been considered, leading to a feasibility report published by the Home Office in January 2011. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to give that further consideration. The Government concluded against funding such a migrant survey after it was estimated that it would cost a mere £2 million, based on the survey design envisaged. Unlike the Government, I think that that would be good value for money, and that option was recommended by the Office for National Statistics. I hope very much that the Minister will deal with that in his closing remarks.

A migrant survey could provide valuable information on the characteristics and distribution of migrants. That would increase the reliability of immigration estimates in relation to smaller geographical areas and be of some help to local authorities such as Westminster, which at the moment are reduced to doing surveys of their own.

In the longer term, as the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) said, the only sure way to improve migration data is to use the e-Borders information. That comes from the advance passenger information, or API, which airlines and other carriers provide to the authorities whenever there is an incoming aircraft or ship.

“Using e-Borders data in the production of long-term and short-term migration counts would be a ground-breaking improvement that would offer several advantages over the migration estimates produced solely from the International Passenger Survey”.

Those are not my words but those of the ONS.

The ONS and the Home Office should move as quickly as possible towards measuring immigration, emigration and net migration using e-Borders data, so that at least a significant proportion of people can be counted in and out of the country as they enter and leave. The e-Borders scheme has now been replaced with the border systems programme, but it should still be possible to use it to count people in and out of the country. Those administrative data would give information about cross-border movements different from that provided by the IPS, but they would still not be without faults. In many respects, the data would give a deeper understanding of the comings and goings from our country. In their response to our report, the Government said that the data gathered through the border systems programme

“does not hold the information to directly estimate net migration”

and that:

“The Border Systems Programme is not designed to provide direct statistical measurement of migration flows”.

My understanding is that that represents a significant downgrading of the Government’s original ambitions for the programme and a failure to deliver what was originally envisaged. The Government’s original business case for the e-Borders scheme said that it would provide

“the ability, for the first time, to comprehensively count all foreign national passengers in and out of the UK, improving public confidence in the integrity of the border and enabling a more accurate count of migrants for future planning and for informing the population count.”

Of course, not everyone entering or leaving the UK is migrating, but if people are on a visa, it should be possible to measure when they enter and when they leave the country. Passport checks are all about checking whether people have a valid visa and whether they are on a watch list. Currently, although 80% or 90% of visas are scanned on entry or exit, we are told that those data are not used for counting in and counting out visa nationals. Why not?

I think that most of the British travelling public would be astonished to find out that passports are scanned but not even people who are on a visa are recorded as they pass into or out of the country. The Home Office should move as rapidly as possible towards integrating visa information with border systems programme data, so that an accurate measurement can be made of immigration, emigration and net migration by people in different visa categories. That would also provide data on the number of people in different visa categories currently living in the UK, and it would enable the Home Office to gather detailed information on the characteristics of migrants who are subject to migration control.

As things stand, we simply do not know how many visa nationals are currently in the country; we do not know how many comply with the rules and how many overstay; and we do not know how many of the people migrating to and from the UK on a long-term basis entered the country in each visa category. That makes it hard to work out whether changes in visa policy are having the intended effect on migration flows and almost impossible to establish the scale of the problem of people who stay here illegally. There is no reason for the situation to persist now that the Government have committed to reintroducing exit checks, but in their response to the Public Administration Committee the Government made no commitment to track the entries and exits of visa holders once that becomes possible, even though it is fully within their power to do so. They say only that that

“may be feasible in future”.

We believe, however, that it should be done as a matter of urgency.

To be clear, we have not recommended that the Government should stop using the IPS by any means, but the Public Administration Committee recommended that the Government plan to end their reliance on that survey as the sole basis for estimating migration flows. The IPS was not designed for the important job that it now has. It was never intended to be used for the purpose of estimating international migration; it was designed to support the work of the then British Tourist Authority by providing economic data on travel and tourism.

The next five years will see much work in Government on developing new data sources that will eventually replace the decennial population census. It is vital that work on immigration be fully co-ordinated and that Departments share intelligence. That our official immigration and emigration estimates do not match our official net migration figure for a whole decade underlines the Committee’s main finding that the current system of relying solely on the IPS for migration statistics is not fit for purpose. Although the IPS provides useful information about the characteristics of migrants, it cannot be relied on to give us accurate numbers of those migrating into and out of the United Kingdom.

There is no reason why the Government cannot use border systems programme data dramatically to improve the accuracy of migration data. The Home Office told us:

“There will be some possibility to link e-Borders data in the future, in due course”,

but we have not yet received any clear commitment that that will happen, let alone a time scale. That is not adequate. The issue requires urgent action. Estimates based on a survey alone are no longer fit for purpose. Instead, we need to make proper use of the electronic data from the border systems programme. The public need and deserve to be given accurate information about migration to the UK, using the latest technology and methods available.

We are now in an election year, during which the issue of immigration will be hotly contested, but that debate is likely to do no more than produce despair in the minds of our voters. The politicians of the main parties are arguing about policies, the effects of which they cannot measure, in relation to numbers of migrants that they cannot determine. That can only undermine trust and confidence in political life, and it will provide an avenue for extremist parties to exploit at the expense of the proper government of this country. We owe it to our voters to deliver more accurate migration statistics as soon as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship of this important debate, Mr Walker. I did not plan to speak, but I will say a few words in support of the excellent report published by the Public Administration Committee. Those of us who sit on the Home Affairs Committee welcome the fact that other Committees are interested in migration issues. I am not in any way parochial, and I do not believe that there are bits of Government that should be reserved only for one Select Committee or another. Such oversight is a core function of the Public Administration Committee, which is so ably led by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin). The Committee has produced a brilliant report that will help not only the Home Affairs Committee but other Select Committees that cover immigration policy, either directly or indirectly.

I will say a couple of things about the importance of accurate statistics. The hon. Gentleman is right that there will be a great deal of debate about immigration in the run-up to the next general election. We are in the odd situation of knowing the date of the general election. Subject to any changes that might occur in the coalition Government over the next few months, we know when the general election will take place and we know—one does not have to be a genius to know this—that immigration will probably be in the top three issues of concern to the British people. That is why it is so important that we have accurate information when immigration is debated in this House, and when it is debated outside by others who represent parties unable to get elected to this House. That is why the report is not only important but timely.

As the House goes on the slow journey to recess, some of us may choose to go abroad for a holiday—depending, of course, on whether our passports have been renewed. We will be watching and observing the “exit strategy” when we get to the airport. It has always been a mystery to me why we have to go through the great drama of supplying passport information and accurate information about our names, so that they do not differ in any way from our passports, prior to departure, yet after people check in and walk past the last person before getting to security, their passports do not really get checked.

I know that the Government’s commitment, which I am sure the Minister will reaffirm, is to have full exit checks by the time of the general election, so that by May 2015, we will have counted everyone out. However, I still do not understand why it is not possible, even at that stage—after checking in and walking past the last person before security—for the officers at Heathrow airport to check a passport on departure. After all, it is not a question of queues. I do not think any special arrangements are made for me or other members of the Home Affairs Committee—people may say, “If not, why not?”—but when I travel through Heathrow, I do not see many queues building up at the point where people show their tickets, walk through and get a little plastic bag to put in their liquids. There are queues before check-in—there is no doubt about that—and there are queues at security. There is an excellent opportunity to glance at people’s passports as they wait to go through security, because there are always queues there, whatever channel they go through.

[Mr Jenkin]

That is an interesting observation. The task of checking people’s luggage and what liquids they are carrying is far more complicated physically than checking passports or tickets or checking people in. However, where there has been a real will to try to reduce that anxious and tiresome part of the journey for passengers, great strides have been made in making a very painful process tolerable for passengers. Does that not show that where there is will, there is a way? We could get far more data from passengers as they go through ports of entry.

[Keith Vaz]

Absolutely. I agree with the hon. Gentleman: of course it can be done. It is an easy win for this Minister, who is a hard-working Minister—I think he has now been in the House three times this week and there is another Adjournment debate before six o’clock; I do not know whether he knew that. It is an easy win for him to announce this change. It needs the co-operation of security staff at Heathrow airport, of course, as well as that of BAA and others, including the airlines, but it can be done.

When I went on my last visit abroad and I gave my details to the people from the Office for National Statistics—they wanted to know my details; I do not know whether the Minister had sent someone to the airport to check whether I was coming back or not—I referred to this report by the Public Administration Committee. They were extremely grateful. They knew about it and they said, “When you go back, please remind everybody that we would like to do this survey for everybody, but we’re not given the resources to be able to do that.” I then asked whether it was the quick survey or the long survey and they said, “We’re happy to do the quick survey, but we would like to do everyone rather than the limited number that we do,” so there is a willingness. People want to be helpful. It is not a case of civil servants and other officials wanting to thwart the will of Parliament and the will of the British people; they want to help. Given that and given the arrangements that are made at airports, why on earth can we not bring this change into effect before 7 May 2015?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hanson]

I take two points from major computing contracts. First, there is a lack of public scrutiny and transparency about the methods, the drawing up of contracts and the terms and conditions. It would be helpful if Parliament and the public could have that scrutiny. I would like agreed final contracts to be made public and open to scrutiny and benchmarking and testing by the public. Secondly—this is not meant to be critical of anyone in particular—I was fortunate to be a Minister for 12 years and I often got involved in a major computing contract after it had been agreed by somebody else or at the end of a review and found that Governments are good at policy, but not at delivery. Benchmarking, the methods of control over major contracts and whether or not the expertise is there to implement major contracts are issues that we need to consider in detail.

[Mr Jenkin]

Just as an aside, if the implementation is no good, that means that the policy was no good, because there is no point in one without the other.

We are of course outside the Schengen area, so exit and entry checks mean nothing unless we can check people coming across our borders from other European Union countries within the Schengen area. Will the right hon. Gentleman make it clear that his party’s policy is that we should be able to check any passenger coming in or out of the UK from or to another EU country regardless of the free movement provisions, and that we should be able to ask them who they are, why they are coming here, where they are going to, and all the other questions that we would ask any other person coming in or out of our country?

[Mr Hanson]

I will give the hon. Gentleman a simple answer: yes. It is extremely important that we can make such checks. I support the principle of free movement, which involves a range of issues, but it is still important, as we are outside and will remain outside of the Schengen area, that we are able to control our borders.

Given the comments of the director general of UK Border Force in March to the Home Affairs Committee, we need clarity on the status of the e-Borders project. The Minister shakes his head again, but we need clarity on the programme’s trajectory and we need to know when he expects to achieve 100% coverage, and the total cost. He also needs to provide information about progress in the contract discussions with Raytheon. If the Government are to stick to a net migration target, they need to know the issues arising from migration in and out of the United Kingdom. Without up-to-date information, as outlined by the Public Administration Committee, they will not be able to keep their promise on net migration.

Getting the figures right is also important because, as everyone who has spoken today has said, the integrity of the figures and our trust and confidence in them are what will give us permission to debate this issue in a positive way in the run-up to the election. The issue of immigration has an element of toxicity to it—it is difficult to debate, and there are a range of political opinions about it. Our debate will be much better informed if in future we have clarity about which people are coming to the United Kingdom, how, where and when they are doing so, the basis upon which they are here and, crucially, when they leave.

That is my final point: as the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex said, we still do not know how many people are overstaying their visas, where they are and what the position is on being able to remove them. That undermines the integrity of our immigration system. I want to see that integrity in the system, with basic information collected in a meaningful way. Dare I say it, we have the opportunity to get political consensus on doing that, so I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jenkin]

In my remarks, I raised the question of the 2011 study conducted by the Home Office into the expansion of the use of separate migration survey data. That would cost only £2 million, so is much better value than increasing the size of the international passenger survey. Is the Minister going to come on to that point in his remarks?

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend did mention that specific aspect. The current discussions with the ONS indicate that its current approach is, rather, to look at other forms of data—other administrative data, such as those from the Department for Work and Pensions—to better inform the statistics. That is its preferred option for this type of work. I give a commitment to discuss the issues again as part of our discussions with the ONS, but that is its preferred approach instead of setting up a separate survey. I have noted the point that my hon. Friend has made, following on from the Select Committee’s recommendations, and we will check and confer with the ONS that that remains its preferred response in providing more localised data in order to inform this subject more carefully. That is certainly the feedback that we have had thus far in respect of what might be beneficial or might help to supplement the information provided by the international passenger survey.

The proposal to increase the IPS may not provide the best value for money, but that does not mean that we or the ONS are at all complacent, or that we do not recognise where improvements can be made. In that context—I think my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor advanced this point—it has been acknowledged that there were problems with the IPS’s estimates following the large surge in eastern European migrants following EU enlargement in 2004. We know that the absence of transitional controls, unlike elsewhere, in the majority view resulted in an unprecedented and surprising number of new arrivals in the years that followed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex highlighted, that significant change also surprised the statisticians. That is why the ONS has taken steps since then to address the coverage of the IPS survey. The ONS is rightly independent and I cannot speak for it, but the revised statistics it has published indicate that some of the issues have been resolved by the size of the survey and some of the specific questions that are being raised as part of its migration statistics improvement programme. The problems that the ONS found were in the survey design, and they have been addressed by recalibrating the survey’s coverage and increasing the sample size as part of that programme.

Questions have been asked about whether the figures are reliable enough for the Government to use them as a basis for our aim on net migration. I accept that any reliance on a survey to monitor a policy objective inevitably means confidence intervals in the central estimates. However, this is not a new issue. Survey estimates have been used in this way for many years to monitor Government policy and societal changes more generally. They are well-established scientific techniques used to ensure that social surveys are well designed and their estimates robust. That is why I would take the advice of the UK Statistics Authority that the central statistical estimate derived from the IPS is currently the best available estimate of net migration.

It must also be remembered that we have a lot of information on migration to monitor migration policy from a wide range of other sources that provide a clear and coherent picture of trends. That picture is reported every quarter in the ONS’s migration statistics quarterly report, and I welcome the steps that the ONS is taking to improve the way in which the data are reported and presented. Those data sources continue to be developed and improved—for example, with the release of additional information by the Home Office on certificates of acceptance of study. The new data allow the public and us to see the impact of the Government’s policies to close down bogus colleges. My hon. Friends will no doubt be aware of my most recent announcements on this issue.

As well as reporting on trends, it is important to look at the impact of migration, and we are grateful for the excellent work of the ONS, through its reports from the 2011 census and other sources, in informing the British public clearly and authoritatively about the significant changes in population that we have seen over the past decade and the impact of migration on the make-up of the population in the UK.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jenkin]

Thank you, Mr Brady, for taking the Chair. I thank all the right hon. and hon. Members who contributed to the debate—particularly two members of my Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) and my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner), who reminded us that we can help to inform our own immigration data by sharing data with other countries.

I fear that the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), is on the wrong track. He was complimentary about my report, I hasten to add, and I am grateful to him; but a massively larger international passenger survey is not the best use of resource, however enthusiastic the people doing it might be. His question about why arbitration on the e-Borders contract is taking so long was apposite. I hope that the Minister will consider that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) is right to say that if we want more granular data, we need to collect it. Despite what the Government say about the inadequacy of e-Borders or border systems data and advance passenger information, I cannot help but feel that we could make better use of it, particularly when it can be cross-referred with visa data information that will be collected from 2015.

I commend the Opposition spokesman, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), for his bipartisan approach. I draw comfort from his remarks and those of the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. There appears to be a degree of cross-party consensus in support of the general thrust of our report and on the need to deal urgently with the issues it raises.

My hon. Friend the Minister showed the extraordinary complexity of the issues in his response, and I am grateful for what he said. My parting thought for him is about not dismissing the fact that checks are made on passports—and will be made on visas—when people enter and leave the UK. We can surely use those administrative data in conjunction with other data. We were not calling for the e-Borders data to replace the international passenger survey data, but we do want to press the Government to get systems going to enable those data to be used to inform the survey data. That would give us far more confidence about the IPS data and the component parts of those data about where people are going and the groups within the sample. That is the passing thought that I want to press on my hon. Friend—I think he said yes, sotto voce, but I will not require Hansard to record that comment, as I am not sure whether I understood him correctly.

I thank you Mr Brady, and Mr Walker, for chairing the debate. We will keep an eye on the matters in question.

Question put and agreed to.

Public Administration Select Committee

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 10th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for this opportunity to launch the Public Administration Select Committee’s report entitled “Caught red-handed: Why we can’t count on Police Recorded Crime statistics”. The Daily Telegraph has already described our report as “devastating”. That is because this is not just about inaccurate numbers; it is about the long crisis of values and ethics at the heart of our police force.

Crime statistics are central to our understanding of the nature and prevalence of crime in England and Wales. They provide crucial information for the police, without which they would have no way of knowing how to deploy their manpower and resources. We found strong evidence that the police under-record crime, particularly sexual crimes such as rape, in many police areas. Lax supervision of recorded crime data means that the police are failing in their core role of protecting the public and preventing crime. The main reason for this mis-recording is the continued prevalence of numerical targets. They create perverse incentives to mis-record crime, so a police officer is presented with a conflict: does he or she record “attempted burglary”, as was originally reported, or subsequently downgrade it to “criminal damage” in order to achieve the burglary target? That creates conflict between the achievement of targets and core policing values. We deprecate the use of targets in the strongest possible terms. But most police forces are still in denial about the damage that targets cause both to data integrity and to standards of behaviour.

The Home Office must accept responsibility for the quality of police recorded crime statistics and do more to discourage the use of targets. As a result of PASC’s inquiry, the UK Statistics Authority has already stripped police recorded crime data of the quality kitemark, “National Statistics”. The Home Office, the Office for National Statistics and the UK Statistics Authority have all been far too passive in addressing this problem, even though they have all known about it for years. Leadership by targets is a flawed leadership model, and that is what really must be addressed, because poor data integrity reflects the poor quality of leadership within the police. What does the institutional dishonesty about police recorded crime say about their compliance with the core values of policing, which are meant to include accountability, honesty and integrity?

That comes on top of all the other controversies that have raised questions about the values and ethics of the police and their leadership: Hillsborough; Stephen Lawrence; the attempt to hide the cause of Ian Tomlinson’s death in the G20 protests; Plebgate; Operation Elveden, about the police accepting payments from journalists to leak unauthorised information; just last month, four police officers under investigation for allegedly getting a burglar to confess to 500 crimes he apparently did not commit; and many other instances.

I yield to no one in my admiration and respect for so many police officers. They put their lives at risk in the line of duty while they serve our communities. We see them around this Palace, ready to throw themselves between us and the terrorists if the need arises. Yet these same officers are deeply cynical about the quality of their leadership and its honesty and integrity.

That is why we recommend that the Committee on Standards in Public Life conduct a wide-ranging inquiry into the police’s compliance with the new code of ethics and, in particular, into the role of leadership in promoting and sustaining those values.

The most depressing part of our inquiry is the way in which the Metropolitan police have treated my constituent, PC James Patrick, who was our key witness. He says he has been forced to resign from the Metropolitan police. Acting as a whistleblower, he tried to highlight serious concerns about police recorded crime and the target culture. We record the fact that we are indebted to PC Patrick for his courage in speaking out, in fulfilment of his duty to the highest standards of public service despite intense pressure to the contrary.

I am pleased that the Minister for Crime Prevention has now written to me—he is on the Front Bench at the moment—to say that the Home Office is looking at a range of what he calls radical proposals to strengthen the protection of whistleblowers within the police. But this has all come too late for PC Patrick. By a quirk of the rules, police offices are denied what is called “interim relief” in constructive dismissal cases, so he will cease to be paid from 6 June while he awaits his tribunal, which will not be until August or September.

We are calling for Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary to investigate the Metropolitan police service in respect of the treatment of PC Patrick. We do not believe that the Metropolitan police service has treated him fairly or with respect and care.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

I have a brief question, but first may I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) and PASC for a forensic report which charts a long-standing and deep-seated problem? Sir Andrew Dilnot said in evidence to the Committee that the more accurate crime statistics become, the more likely they are to show that crime is rising. Now that we have the Committee’s verdict that we can no longer rely on crime statistics, does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be most unwise, until such time as the system has been changed in the way the Committee recommended, for Ministers to rely on the crime statistics to assert that crime is falling?

[Mr Jenkin]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his compliments, but I am not sure that that is quite what Sir Andrew said. What the Office for National Statistics has said is that crime may not be falling quite as fast as police recorded crime suggests, but the crime survey for England and Wales, which is a survey not a recording system, does corroborate the fact that crime is falling. That is the figure the Labour party relied on when in government and it is the figure the Government of any party are entitled to rely upon.

On the substantive point that we need to improve the auditing of police recorded crime statistics in order to make them a more reliable source of data, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.

[The Minister for Crime Prevention (Norman Baker)]

May I, on behalf of the Home Office, thank my hon. Friend and his Committee for the serious work they have done? We will, of course, give a proper response in due course to his recommendations. Would he accept that some, but not all, of the issues he has raised are, fortunately, slightly historical in nature? We have taken action to discourage central targets. We have also taken action to ensure that the independent Office for National Statistics is responsible for crime statistics, and we asked Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary last June to carry out an audit of the quality of crime recording, so we are taking action at the Home Office.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. Yes, this is historical, but I am afraid that makes all the more damning the fact that police recorded crime is still being misrecorded in this country. Yes, the Home Office has handed this over to the ONS and the UK Statistics Authority, and the Home Office has ceased to set its own targets, but the Committee does recommend that the Home Office, which collects the data and gives them to the ONS, has an obligation to ensure that those data are recorded correctly. We lament the fact that HMIC has not been doing regular audits. Where a regular audit was done in the Kent polices there was an immediate increase in police recorded crime. We probably need to look forward to increases in certain categories of crime, as that would confirm that such crimes are now being recorded correctly. That should be regarded as a good thing, so long as we can corroborate that with the crime survey in England and Wales still showing a fall in crime. The Home Office has overall accountability to this House for the quality of police recorded crime statistics. So the Home Office, along with the Crime Statistics Advisory Committee, the UK Statistics Authority and the ONS, has a responsibility to ensure that the police recording of crime is improved, and overall the Home Office is accountable to this House for ensuring that the police recording of crime is of better quality than it is now.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman and the Committee for their work. I have long since stopped trusting police statistics; propaganda banners in the centre of Hammersmith tell me that my constituents are safer because there are 42 extra police, but when I go to the Mayor of London’s website I am told that there are 158 fewer police and police community support officers than there were at the time of the last general election. What his Committee said about how this situation

“erodes public trust in the police and…the…confidence of frontline police officers”

is absolutely right. However, we do need accurate statistics, as well as to address the ethics points he talked about, so what can be done to ensure that we have accurate statistics in the future?

[Mr Jenkin]

There are three steps to take to ensure more accurate crime statistics. One is regular audit. The second is to abandon targets. Many police and crime commissioners have abandoned targets altogether, because they recognise that they have a distorting effect on behaviour and attitudes. The third is that the police themselves need to emphasise the core policing values of accountability, honesty and integrity so that police officers at desks recording crimes recognise that, above everything else, recording the crimes effectively is a microcosm of the honesty, integrity and accountability that they must carry throughout their entire policing profession. It is these values that have been subverted by the target culture. That is the responsibility of both parties over a long period—it is not a partisan point. Our key witness told me that the Metropolitan police is still full of target junkies. It will take a long time to change the culture of leadership throughout our police forces in England and Wales—this also applies to Scotland, although we have not inquired into Scotland—but it has to be done.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

It is never easy to be a whistleblower, but I cannot imagine a much tougher environment to be a whistleblower in than the police service. What practical measures of protection does the Committee recommend to safeguard the interests of people such as my hon. Friend’s brave constituent PC Patrick in the future?

[Mr Jenkin]

We recommend immunity from disciplinary proceedings while a whistleblowing process is under way. That is standard practice in the financial services industry, nuclear industry, aviation sector, transport sector and many other industries, and it should be so in the police as well. I am pleased to say that, in a letter sent to me by my hon. Friend the Minister, a number of possible options have been included. They are:

“Anonymity for the whistleblower from the point at which the allegation is made…‘sealed’ investigations so that, for a set period, no-one under investigation knows that it is happening …immunity from disciplinary/misconduct proceedings… financial incentives for whistleblowers, for example a share of recovered criminal assets from the case…protection against vexatious or malicious allegations.”

All those options would have made life very different for my constituent.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

As a member of the Select Committee, I was pleased to have taken part in the work on this first-class report. I congratulate the Chairman on his strong leadership in bringing forward the report and on his statement today. The issue of no-crime rates for rapes and sexual offences is a most serious matter. Although I fully support the recommendation for research, is the matter not so serious that the Government should act now to seek to ensure that all rapists are brought to justice and that women and indeed some men can feel safe from such attacks in future?

[Mr Jenkin]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his work on the PASC and for his question. I refer to chart 3 on page 17 of the report, which shows a remarkable divergence in the average no-crime rate reported for rape incidents. It is important to understand that no constabulary sets a target for rape. That lesson has been learnt, but the culture of downgrading rapes to lesser offences is embedded in the culture of the police. Generations of police officers have learnt that it is a good thing to downgrade the importance of crimes to make the figures look better. The result is a 20% variation across forces in how often they downgrade a rape to a lesser offence. That shows that there must be a very wide divergence of practice across police forces, and it demonstrates why an investigation into this question is necessary, particularly for such a serious offence. I expect the same applies to many other offences, such as domestic violence and violence against women and some of the less fashionable offences that we have difficulty talking about.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I declare an interest as a special constable with the British Transport police. In my brief career with the police, I have never come across any instance where a police officer has knowingly downgraded a crime. Nevertheless, I strongly commend the Chairman for his hard-hitting report, which pulls no punches and which is clearly an example of how Select Committees in this place should report and not be frightened of dealing with these difficult issues in a forthright way. So serious are the conclusions in the report that, if I were the Home Secretary, the matter would be right at the top of my in-tray. What indications has the Chairman been given by the Home Office about when the Home Secretary will come to the House to respond to the conclusions in his report? The conclusions are so serious that I believe they should be discussed at Cabinet level, and this House should be informed promptly of what the Government will do to ensure the integrity of the recording of crimes by our police forces, which is a hugely important issue for all our constituents.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. Sadly, I must tell him that there is not a single police officer on the streets or around the Palace who has expressed the least surprise about what we were told in evidence by PC Patrick and many other witnesses. They all knew that this was going on, and everybody has known that this has been going on in many police forces, possibly most police forces, for very many years. The fact that my hon. Friend has not been exposed to it is intriguing; I will say no more than that. Let me reassure him that I am immensely reassured that my hon. Friend the Minister is in the House today and has indeed participated in these proceedings. I have already had a meeting with the Home Secretary at which we have had a preliminary discussion about the report. My hon. Friend is tempting me to apply for a fuller debate on the report so that Ministers can give a fuller response. Perhaps that can happen after the Government have responded in full to our report.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Is not the most egregious example of the waste and futility of target setting what happened in the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime? In seeking to set three targets for reducing crime, reducing costs and improving morale, it decided to have targets of 20%, 20% and 20% in what was an obvious way of headline chasing. Is the Chairman shocked by what we heard in evidence to his Committee and to the Home Affairs Committee? Although the Met has men and women of integrity in it who are entirely free of any corruption and are entirely honourable, the surprise is that, going back to the murder of Daniel Morgan 27 years ago, there are elements in the Met that are institutionally corrupt.

[Mr Jenkin]

Our recommendation is that MOPAC should abandon targets. If it has slogans, they should be aspirations, not targets. The hon. Gentleman, who is on the Committee and for whose work I am grateful, is right that there are aspects of this that raise very serious questions about the ethics and values of the leadership of the police, particularly the Metropolitan police.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the work that he has done on this matter. May I draw Members’ attention to paragraph 39 which says that

“misrecording of sexual offences is deplorable, but especially so if this has been brought about by means of improperly persuading or pressurising victims into withdrawing or downgrading their report.”?

That particularly affects children.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments.

[Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)]

As a member of the PASC, may I, too, congratulate the Chair of the Select Committee on his effective leadership and tenacity in this inquiry? Will he explain to the House why the flaws in the recording system were not picked up through external inspection?

[Mr Jenkin]

In our evidence, we heard that there was not enough internal or external inspection. When Kent police were specially audited a year or two ago, it turned out that there was substantial manipulation of crime statistics. Whether it was advertent or inadvertent, it was happening. The result has been a much cleaner bill of health for Kent. Regular audit and inspection is one of the things that must happen, and HMIC must make that a priority every year.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

In Lincolnshire during this Parliament, we have had an absurd spat between the chief constable and the police and crime commissioner, which resulted in the chief constable being suspended for a time—not for anything operational, just some rubbish about political correctness. Meanwhile, while all this money and time wasting is going on I, speaking personally as an ordinary member of the public, have been a victim of crime twice in Lincolnshire and I have to say that the response of the police was completely underwhelming, with no follow-up and nobody caught. People are increasingly fed up with members of police forces, particularly at the top, who pay themselves quite well and seem to be enmeshed in empire building, political correctness and form filling. What we and the public want to get back to—this is why this report is so good—and what I want my hon. Friend to comment on, is old-fashioned community policing, with the police in our communities, the old bobby on the beat, walking around, knowing everyone, talking to people and not just sitting in their headquarters having these absurd spats—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I am sure that there must have been a question somewhere in that great rant, and I am sure that Mr Jenkin will be able to pick out an answer.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am interested to note that Lincolnshire is one of the outliers in the table of the average no-crime rate for reported rape incidents that shows the downgrading of rape. As I look at the table, I cannot remember instantly whether that means it is very good or very bad—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) says that I should turn it upside down. The hankering after practical policing based on common sense outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) suggests that the police would be well advised to lead according to common-sense values and the values in the ethics code. If they do the right thing on the day according to those values, their leadership should back them.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Last but certainly not least, I call Tim Loughton.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I, too, commend my hon. Friend and the PASC for this forthright and uncomfortable report. Is he aware that the figures are being distorted further by the police’s increasingly arbitrary use of police information notices? When an individual perceives that harassment has taken place, often devoid of a common-sense test of whether a complaint has substance or is vexatious, according to Sussex police, at least, there is no need for them to follow their own guidance as it is only guidance. Even more worryingly, complaints about comments made in this House by hon. Members can be registered as a hate incident by police despite our parliamentary privilege.

[Mr Jenkin]

The case that ended up in court as a result of the incident concerning my hon. Friend—

[Tim Loughton]

Not in court.

[Mr Jenkin]

It did not finish up in court—that was the point, wasn’t it? It was privileged. I thought the incident was bizarre and showed an extraordinary lack of understanding of where the police sit in the constitutional framework of this country. It seemed to me to lack common sense and I agree with my hon. Friend.

I should say for the record that Cleveland, Surrey and Lincolnshire had a far higher no-crime rate than the national average when it comes to reported rapes. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough should be asking his police why they record rape and then downgrade it so much more often than the vast majority of constabularies.

2014 JHA Opt-out Decision

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mrs May]

I give way first to the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Mr Jenkin]

rose—

[Mrs May]

I said that I would give way to my hon. Friend.

[Mr Jenkin]

I thank my right hon. Friend, who is being very generous. I welcome her words about the importance of this House maintaining control over these matters, but we lose control over them in perpetuity if we opt back into any of the measures. That therefore represents a permanent transfer of sovereignty that the current situation does not represent. Do I take it from her comments on the renegotiation that what the coalition agrees to opt back into would not be subject to renegotiation by a future Conservative Government? It would seem rather incredible to believe that a British Prime Minister could opt into something in one Parliament and then in the next Parliament go back and say, “No, we want to opt out again after all.”

[Mrs May]

The whole point about the renegotiation that we as the Conservative party have announced we will be undertaking is that we achieve a new settlement in terms of the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union. We have our views on the future of the European Union as well. Those views have been very ably expressed by the Prime Minister in speeches that he has made. As part of that renegotiation, it would be odd indeed, and colleagues would question it, if the Conservative party, as part of its commitment, said, “We will renegotiate, but not these bits.” We will renegotiate the United Kingdom’s relationship with the European Union. I should add, in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), who asked about the opt-out, that the House of Lords will also debate this matter on Monday.

[Mr Jenkin]

My right hon. Friend seems to be saying that we will opt out of the European arrest warrant and then we might opt back into it and then we might opt out of it again. Is that what she is saying?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend may find it rather strange that we have to opt out and then try to opt back in, but that is precisely because of the system that was negotiated by the previous Labour Government. It is not possible for us to opt out of every measure apart from, for example, the European arrest warrant; as I will explain, we have to opt out of everything and then choose to opt into some measures.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

The Government have said that that would not be possible and that they would have to go back to the previous convention. Under that extradition convention, we experienced some long delays, including taking 10 years to send a suspected terrorist back to France. I do not think that is acceptable, and I do not think that the public would think that it was acceptable for us to have a French terrorist, or someone wanted in France, in this country and being unable to send him back quickly to face trial and to face justice.

[Mr Jenkin]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I shall give way once more, then I want to make progress, as many Members wish to contribute to the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jenkin]

We still do not know whether the right hon. Lady is in favour of opting out or not—it sounds like not.

Yes, it might be more difficult to extradite some people from the European Union to this country, or it might be easier if we had a bilateral agreement. Were we to maintain sovereign control of all our extradition arrangements we would be able both to extradite whomsoever we liked and to deport them, and we cannot do that if we are more and more subject to the European Court of Justice.

[Yvette Cooper]

In fact, having sovereign arrangements with no ability to extradite without having to go through a very long, legal process that may last 10 years does not help us to get rid of the suspected criminals whom we want to send back to Europe, and it does not help us to bring back to Britain the suspected criminals who have fled abroad. For very many years, people fled to the costa del crime, and Britain was unable to bring them back.

I shall make some progress, as I want to refer to the points that hon. Members have made about the measures that the Home Secretary wants to opt out of. Again, it is hard to take a full view without proper scrutiny and without Select Committees being able to look at this. The Prime Minister described this last week as

“a massive transfer of powers”.

The Home Secretary has described it as an historic moment, and said that we should celebrate the sovereignty involved in this particular opt-out process and in the Command Paper that she published last week. But we should look at the details in the explanatory memorandum of some of the things that we would opt out of. Britain would no longer be expected to have a good practice guide on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters, but we will keep one anyway as part of other plans for the European investigation order. Nor will we sign up to the European judicial network, which offers a point of contact in each country for judicial queries, but that, too, will still happen anyway, again because of the European investigation order. We will not sign up to having someone to act as a contact point for cross-border allegations of corruption, but UK bodies plan to do so anyway. We will not sign up to receive a directory of specialist counter-terrorism officers, but we are already doing it so we will carry on doing so. I suspect somebody will send it to us in the post anyway. We will not sign up to a whole series of accession measures which apply to other countries and did not cover us anyway. Time and again we are opting out of dozens of measures that either do not operate any more or cover areas where we plan to carry on regardless, whether we are in or out.

Counter-terrorism

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am extremely grateful.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I welcome the fact that my hon. Friend has been able to give information to the House today, perfectly properly provoked by an urgent question from the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman. May we all reflect on the fact that the timing of these matters has reflected the extraordinary complexity and difficulty of dealing with these matters, and one might take the criticisms from the Opposition Front Bench a bit more seriously if they had less of a party political flavour about them?

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend makes a very wise point. I am still not entirely clear whether those on the Opposition Front Bench support this, because the shadow Home Secretary neglected to say that.